World news

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump reportedly seeks 2024 campaign role for far-right activist Laura Loomer

      by

      Donald Trump has told aides to hire the far-right anti-Muslim activist and failed congressional candidate Laura Loomer for a role in his campaign to return to the White House in 2024, the New York Times has reported.Citing four anonymous sources, the Times noted that Loomer, 29, attended Trump’s speech at Mar-a-Lago in Florida on Tuesday night, an angry rant delivered hours after the former president pleaded not guilty to 34 felony charges in New York over hush money payments, including to the porn star Stormy Daniels.Trump remains the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, enjoying big leads over his closest challenger, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, despite the historic indictment and multiple other forms of legal jeopardy.DeSantis has not declared a campaign but has nonetheless presented himself as a candidate in Trump’s hard-right mould. The former governors Nikki Haley (South Carolina) and Asa Hutchinson (Arkansas), declared candidates closer to the political centre, barely register in polling.Loomer told the Times: “I’m not going to comment on private conversations that I had with the president. The president knows I have always been a Trump loyalist and that I’m committed to helping him win re-election in 2024.”A Trump spokesperson said: “The entire movement is united behind President Trump and his campaign, and it will take everyone rowing in the same direction in order to beat [Joe] Biden and take our country back.”Loomer said Trump “likes me very much. And it’s a shame that he’s surrounded by some people that run to a publication [the Times] notorious for attacking him in order to try to cut me at the knees instead of being loyal.”Loomer ran for Congress in Florida in 2020, winning Trump’s endorsement and a Republican primary but losing the general election.She told the Times she was a “Jewish conservative woman, a Trump loyalist and a free speech absolutist”. In the current election cycle, she has agitated against DeSantis, in one instance picketing an appearance to promote his campaign memoir.Loomer has previously described herself as “pro-white nationalism”, claiming “there’s a difference between white nationalism and white supremacy … and a lot of liberals and leftwing globalist Marxist Jews don’t understand that”.In the same conversation with a white supremacist podcast, in 2017, Loomer said the US “really was built as the white Judeo-Christian ethnostate, essentially. Over time, immigration and all these calls for diversity, it’s starting to destroy this country.”Another attendee at Trump’s speech on Tuesday, the far-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, greeted news of Trump’s courtship of Loomer with evident dismay.“Laura Loomer is mentally unstable and a documented liar,” wrote Greene, who has risen to power in the Republican party despite spreading conspiracy theories including that wildfires are caused by space technology controlled by the Rothschild family and that the Parkland school shooting in Florida was a “false flag” operation.Loomer, Greene said, “can not [sic] be trusted. She spent months lying about me and attacking me just because I supported Kevin McCarthy for [House] speaker and after I had refused to endorse her last election cycle.”Greene also accused Loomer of “loving” Nick Fuentes, the antisemitic white supremacist activist who controversially dined with Trump and the rapper Ye last November.Observers pointed out that Greene has appeared with Fuentes in public and spoken at a conference he staged.Regarding Trump, Greene said she would “make sure he knows” why hiring Loomer would be a bad move. More

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in World Politics

      What You Need to Know About the US Presidency

      by

      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

    • 125 Shares159 Views

      in World Politics

      The New Shift from Pink to Green in Latin America

      by

      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      US domestic elections play key role in its foreign policy | Letters

      by

      Jonathan Freedland’s perceptive analysis of the progress/decline of Northern Ireland and Israel respectively since 1998 misses one important dynamic (Netanyahu is leading a coup against his own country. But the threat is not only to Israel, 31 March): the role the American domestic electoral cycle plays in influencing US foreign policy.I worked in Washington DC for the congressman Gary Ackerman (Democrat, Queens, New York) from 1989 to 1990. The substantial Jewish-American and Irish-American populations in his congressional district led Gary to take dramatically contrasting positions to Israel and Northern Ireland. Whereas he backed Israel’s policies without question, he also seemed to be a staunch supporter of Irish republicanism.This electoral imperative is, arguably, an important factor why US representatives who are not Irish-American have been members of the Irish caucus in Congress over the years. The importance of re-election is one reason why the Good Friday agreement is sacrosanct in Washington, and the lack of such a motive with regards to Palestinian issues hinders resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.Michael HerronLondon I always value Jonathan Freedland’s commentaries, never more so than at present, when Israel is fighting for its democratic soul. I feel anguished to see the democratic hopes and ideals of Israel’s founders torn to shreds by this far-right government.Jonathan Freedland provides a compass and wake-up call for all who care about Israel’s future, and I am grateful for that. I support the democratic movement which, hopefully, will continue to gather momentum, in Israel and among the diaspora. Elizabeth Barnell Shrewsbury, Shropshire More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      The man who connected Bill Clinton and Gerry Adams: Politics Weekly America podcast

      by

      Next week, Joe Biden and Bill Clinton will arrive in Northern Ireland to join commemorations of the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement. Clinton is now celebrated as one of the key players behind the agreement, but he didn’t do it alone. It took years of background efforts – of secret meetings, discreet lobbying and high-risk shadow diplomacy, by people whose names we’ve never known – to convince the United States to get involved.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to one of those people, Niall O’Dowd, who tells the extraordinary story of how he built a secret channel between Clinton and the Irish republican movement

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden proposal forbids US schools from outright bans on transgender athletes

      by

      The Biden administration has released a proposal that would forbid schools and colleges across the US from enacting outright bans on transgender athletes. But teams could create some limits in certain cases – for example, to ensure fairness.If finalized, the proposal would become enshrined as a provision of Title IX. It must undergo a lengthy approval process, however, and it’s almost certain to face challenges from opponents.“Every student should be able to have the full experience of attending school in America, including participating in athletics, free from discrimination,” said Miguel Cardona, Biden’s education secretary, in a statement.The Biden administration used “fairness of competition” as criteria, which has been part of the debate in the US and globally.The move is an effort to counteract a wave of Republican-backed measures targeting LGBTQ+ rights, particularly the participation of trans athletes in school sports. The proposal must undergo a lengthy approval process, however, and it’s almost certain to face challenges. While opponents sharply criticized the proposal, some advocates for transgender athletes were concerned that it did not go far enough.The proposal came on the same day that the US supreme court refused to let West Virginia enforce a state law banning trans athletes from female sports teams at public schools, one of many similar measures across the country.The justices denied West Virginia’s request to lift an injunction against the law that a lower court had imposed while litigation continues over its legality in a challenge brought by a 12-year-old transgender girl, Becky Pepper-Jackson.Two conservative justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, publicly dissented from the decision.The law, passed in 2021, designates sports teams at public schools including universities according to “biological sex” and bars male students from female athletic teams “based solely on the individual’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth”.In the lawsuit, Pepper-Jackson and her mother Heather argued that the law discriminates based on sex and transgender status in violation of the US constitution’s 14th amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law, as well as the Title IX civil rights law that bars sex-based discrimination in education.West Virginia said in a court filing that it can lawfully assign athletic teams by sex rather than gender identity “where biological differences between males and females are the very reason those separate teams exist”.Pepper-Jackson, who attends a middle school in the West Virginia city of Bridgeport, sued after being prohibited from trying out for the girls’ cross-country and track teams.Critics argue trans athletes have an advantage over cisgender women in competition. Last year, Lia Thomas became the first transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming title. College sports’ governing body, however, adopted a sport-by-sport approach to transgender athletes in January 2022, which was to bring the organization in line with the US and International Olympic committees, though recently the NCAA’s board decided it won’t be fully implemented until 2023-24.At the same time, international sports-governing bodies are instituting policies that ban all trans athletes from competing in track and field and effectively ban trans women from swimming events. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Protests in Tennessee as Democrats face removal for gun control demonstration

      by

      Thousands of protesters flocked to the Tennessee state capitol on Thursday to support three Democratic lawmakers facing expulsion for their role in a gun control demonstration after the killings of three children and three adults at a Nashville elementary school last week.Crowds cheered and chanted outside the house chamber, so loud that they drowned out proceedings.Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson are the subjects of the expulsion vote. Last week, they approached the front of the chamber floor and chanted back and forth with gun control supporters who packed the gallery.On Thursday the three Democrats held hands as they walked on to the house floor. During the pledge of allegiance, Pearson raised his fist to the crowd.Their possible expulsion has once again thrust Tennessee into the national spotlight, underscoring not only the ability of the Republican supermajority to silence opponents but also its increasing willingness to do so. The move sends a chilling message just as lawmakers grapple with how to respond to the devastating shooting at the Covenant school.On Thursday, many protesters had traveled from Memphis and Knoxville, areas Pearson and Johnson represent, and stood in a line that wrapped around the building. Johnson urged those in the gallery to remain calm and not shout at lawmakers, to avoid getting removed.Protesters outside the chamber held up signs that said “School zones shouldn’t be war zones”; “Muskets didn’t fire 950 rounds per minute”, with a photo of George Washington; and “You can silence a gun … but not the voice of the people”.As the House began proceedings, a Democrat, Vincent Dixie, urged that colleagues “not get distracted”. He mentioned the funeral of Mike Hill, the custodian killed at the Covenant school, which took place earlier in the week.“I want us to keep in mind the sacrifice that he made to keep those kids safe,” Dixie said. “Each of us has power to make change.”Before the expulsion vote, House members were set to debate more than 20 bills, including a school safety proposal requiring public and private schools to submit building safety plans to the state.The bill did not address gun control, sparking criticisms from some Democrats that lawmakers were only addressing a symptom and not the cause of school shootings.Expulsions in the Tennessee general assembly are rare.In 2019, lawmakers faced pressure to expel the former Republican representative David Byrd, after he faced accusations of sexual misconduct dating to when he was a high school basketball coach three decades before.Republicans declined to take action, pointing out that he was re-elected as the allegations surfaced. Byrd retired last year.In 2022, the state senate expelled a Democrat, Katrina Robinson, after she was convicted of using about $3,400 in federal grant money on wedding expenses instead of her nursing school.Before that case, state lawmakers last ousted a house member in 2016, voting 70-2 to remove the Republican Jeremy Durham after an investigation detailed allegations of improper sexual contact with at least 22 women in four years in office.If Johnson, Jones or Pearson are expelled, the county commissions in their districts would get to pick replacements to serve until special elections could be held. The three Democrats would remain eligible to run in those contests. More