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      Republican Ted Cruz introduces bill to block US supreme court expansion

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      The Republican senator Ted Cruz, whose party defied convention to delay then rush conservatives on to the supreme court, has introduced a constitutional amendment to stop Democrats expanding the court in response.“The Democrats’ answer to a supreme court that is dedicated to upholding the rule of law and the constitution is to pack it with liberals who will rule the way they want,” Cruz said.“The supreme court should be independent, not inflated by every new administration. That’s why I’ve introduced a constitutional amendment to permanently keep the number of justices at nine.”There is no constitutional provision for how many justices sit on the court.Democrats say the current court is not independent of the Republican party.In 2016, when the conservative Antonin Scalia died Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, held the seat open until a Republican president, Donald Trump, could replace a Democrat, Barack Obama, and nominate Scalia’s replacement. Neil Gorsuch filled that seat.In 2020, Democrats were helpless again when Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal lion, died shortly before the presidential election and McConnell changed course, rushing Amy Coney Barrett on to the court before Trump lost to Joe Biden.Those changes and the replacement of the retiring Anthony Kennedy with Brett Kavanaugh produced a court dominated, 6-3, by conservatives.Conservative justices including Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas have claimed not to be influenced by political considerations.Coney Barrett notably did so, saying the court “is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks”, while standing next to McConnell at a political studies centre named for the Republican leader.Among conservative rulings passed down by the new super-majority, a May 2022 decision saw the court side with Cruz in a case concerning personal loans to campaigns. The three liberal justices said the ruling paved the way for corruption.But the Dobbs decision of last year, removing the right to abortion, most enraged Democrats and progressives.On the left, plans have been floated to increase the size of the court and thereby redress its ideological balance.Writing for the Guardian last year, David Daley, author of Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count, said: “The court’s hard-right majority has neither popular support for its agenda nor institutional legitimacy.“It is the product of a hostile takeover of the courts 50 years in the planning by conservatives who have long understood that unpopular policies … can be thrust upon Americans by an unaccountable and unelected judiciary.“The court must be expanded and reformed to counter a rightwing power play that threatens to remake American democracy and life itself.”Biden ordered a commission to study options for reform. It found bipartisan support for term limits for justices but reported “profound disagreement” on whether the court should be expanded. Biden has said he is “not a fan” of expanding the court.Cruz’s amendment has little chance of passing a Democratic-held Senate but 10 Republican senators supported it nonetheless.Josh Hawley of Missouri said: “For years the left has been desperate to pack the court to promote their radical agenda. We must ensure that we stay true to the court’s founding principles, maintain the precedent of nine justices, and keep the Democrats from their brazen attempts to rig our democracy.” More

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      Trump appointees interfered to weaken EPA assessment of toxic chemical

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      Trump administration appointees at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) meddled in agency science to weaken the toxicity assessment of a dangerous chemical, a new report by the US body’s internal watchdog has found.In response to what it labeled “political interference”, the Biden administration in February 2021 pulled the assessment, republished it months later using what it said is sound science, and declared it had resolved the issue.But EPA scientists who spoke to the Guardian say several employees willingly worked with the Trump appointees to weaken the assessment, and they were never reprimanded or fired.The scientists say the controversy is part of a deeper problem afflicting the EPA: industry influence on career staff, and an unwillingness from the EPA to address it.“The issue is part of the larger rot at the agency of career staff working with industry to weaken the EPA,” a current agency scientist familiar with the situation said. The scientist did not use their name for fear of reprisal.The controversy centered around a 2021 toxicity report for PFBS, a type of PFAS compound that is toxic at low levels. Research has linked the chemical to kidney disease, reproductive problems and thyroid damage, and it has been found throughout the environment, including in an estimated 860,000 Americans’ drinking water.PFAS are known as “forever chemicals” due to their longevity in the environment, and are a growing health hazard.In its recent report, the EPA’s office of inspector general described “unprecedented” interference by former Trump-appointed EPA chief Andrew Wheeler and other political appointees, who ordered the alteration of the PFBS toxicity value just as the assessment was about to be published in late 2020. The revised assessment went live just four days before Trump left office in 2021.The assessment would have been used by regulators to establish drinking-water quality standards and other environmental cleanup targets that companies must meet when addressing pollution. Instead of a specific target number, Wheeler ordered a range of toxicity values for PFBS, which meant companies required to clean up pollution could choose to leave higher levels of the chemical in the environment.That could have led to a “less costly, but possibly insufficient” cleanup, the inspector general wrote in its report, and the change’s critics say it put human health at risk. It is unlikely the revised assessment was used in the few weeks that it was publicly available, the inspector general wrote.The changes were “something that industry has always wanted”, former EPA scientist Betsy Southerland previously told the Guardian.The disagreement about the toxicity value centered around the uncertainty factor used in PFBS’s assessment, which was developed by career scientists in the EPA’s office of research and development (ORD). Uncertainty factors are designed to fill in gaps in data on chemicals’ effects on the human body. In PFBS’s case, studies on how the compound affects thyroid hormone levels and neural development were not available. The uncertainty factors would help account for those gaps.The inspector general noted the ORD’s development of the assessment was twice peer-reviewed, followed EPA review protocol, and the office of chemical safety and pollution prevention (OCSPP) had twice reviewed and signed off on the assessment.“There was a lot of rigor, a lot of involvement across the agency,” said Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, then an ORD science adviser.Still, at political appointees’ behest, the OCSPP alternative uncertainty factors were inserted just days before the assessment was published. The new numbers were inserted without being fully scientifically vetted, and they lacked “technical and quality assurance review”, the inspector general wrote.The range of toxicity values was framed by political appointees as a “compromise” to resolve the alleged dispute between the OCSPP and the ORD, the inspector general said. The appointees also defended it as a “policy” decision, not an alteration of scientific data.After the Biden EPA pulled the assessment, it issued a statement declaring the process was “compromised by political interference as well as infringement of authorship”.During its review, the administration took no action against career employees who implemented the political appointees’ changes. Those employees “made the changes happily”, according to Kyla Bennett of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer), but remained at the agency.An internal email thread from the Trump EPA’s waning days and comments in the inspector general report illuminate how career employees in the OCSPP either requested the changes or did not object to alterations.Among the career employees were Ana Lowit, Todd Stedeford and Tala Henry. Henry and Stedeford were previously accused by whistleblowers of altering scientific documents at industry’s behest to make other chemicals appear less toxic.Stedeford said he “adamantly opposed” the PFBS changes, and denied wrongdoing in previous allegations made against him by whistleblowers.The thread opened on 7 January 2021 with an email from Henry, then a deputy director in the OCSPP, sent to political appointees and career employees within the ORD and the OCSPP. She told the group the alterations are “something [Wheeler] has requested”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe only career EPA employee to oppose the order to change the assessment was Orme-Zavaleta, who in a response from the same day noted the assessment had already been reviewed twice and was considered “final”. Further changes would delay it for months because it would need to go through the review process, she told the group.In response to Orme-Zavaleta’s emails, a Trump political appointee said the assessment needed to be published in the next week because Wheeler had a media interview on PFAS and wanted to be able to “highlight” the assessment.“They were trying so hard to get it out before Trump left office,” Bennett said.On 8 January, a Trump appointee said Wheeler had allowed the review process to be “expedited”, and the altered assessment would be published before Biden took over the EPA.“Great news!” the appointee wrote.Wheeler’s decision “flew in the face of scientific integrity”, Orme-Zavaleta told the Guardian.The inspector general report suggests OCSPP career employees such as Stedeford, Henry and Lowit did not object to the changes: “We found no evidence that intimidation or coercion took place.”However, the three career staffers were in an “awkward position”, Orme-Zavelta said.“Career staff report to political leadership, and they were directed to make these changes,” she said. “It was a very tough position for them to say no, because that would have been insubordination.”Bennett said the employees should have pushed back: “Having been a whistleblower at the EPA myself, I understand it is not a fun place to be, but it’s better than just shrugging your shoulders and making the changes. They could have, and should have, fought back.”Lowit now works as a science adviser in the OCSPP and did not respond to a request for comment.Stedeford has since left the EPA to work for a law firm that represents chemical manufacturers.Henry retired amid the inspector general investigation late last year.Orme-Zavaleta said the controversy was “demoralizing” for ORD scientists, and some remain “bitter”.The inspector general report failed to address how to protect employees from political leadership pressure, she added. And with the EPA deeming the incident “political interference” instead of a larger problem, employees who spoke with the Guardian fear more of the same.“People know what happened, and they know there were no consequences, so there’s no deterrent,” said an employee familiar with the situation. “It’s only going to make people more brazen about doing this kind of thing in the future.” More

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      Trump hush-money grand jury proceedings abruptly postponed

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      The Manhattan grand jury expected to consider criminal charges against Donald Trump over his role in the payment of hush money to the adult film star Stormy Daniels will not meet on Wednesday, according to a source familiar with the matter, and is on standby about meeting on Thursday.The reason for the schedule change was not immediately clear.The grand jury, which meets in the afternoons on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, is not required to meet three times every week. It may hear from an additional witness before being asked to vote on whether to return an indictment in connection with the hush money payment, the source said.The adjournment sparked a flurry of speculation among people close to Trump, advisers asking if it signalled weaknesses in the case being prosecuted by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, or whether there was more damning evidence to come.A spokesperson for the district attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment.On Monday, prosecutors allowed a Trump-aligned lawyer, Robert Costello, to testify before the grand jury. He assailed the credibility and account of the prosecution’s star witness, the former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.The case centers on the $130,000 Trump paid Daniels through Cohen in the final days of the 2016 election. Trump reimbursed Cohen with $35,000 checks using his personal funds, which were recorded as legal expenses. In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges, some connected to the payments.What charges the district attorney might now seek against Trump remain unclear, though some members of his legal team believe the most likely scenario involves a base charge of falsifying business records, coupled with tax fraud, because Trump would not have paid tax on the payments.In recent days, Trump has been resigned to the fact that he will face criminal charges in the hush-money case, and has repeatedly insisted to advisers that he wants to be handcuffed when he makes an appearance in court, the Guardian previously reported.The former president has reasoned that since he would need to go to Manhattan criminal court in downtown New York and surrender to authorities for fingerprinting and a mugshot, the sources said, he might as well seek to turn it into a spectacle.Trump’s increasing insistence that he wants to be handcuffed behind his back for a perp walk appears to come from various motivations, including his desire to show defiance for what he sees as an unfair prosecution, and to have the whole affair galvanize his base for his 2024 presidential campaign.But above all, sources close to Trump said, he is deeply anxious that any special arrangements, like making his first court appearance by video link or skulking into the courthouse via an obscure entrance, would make him look weak or like a loser.Trump’s legal team has recoiled at the idea of him appearing in person, and recommended that Trump allow them to quietly turn him in next week and schedule a remote appearance, even citing guidance from his Secret Service detail about security concerns.But Trump has rejected that approach. Over the weekend, he told various allies he did not care if someone shot him, as he would become “a martyr” if so.He also said that if he was shot, he would probably win the presidency in 2024, the sources said. More

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      DeSantis hits Republican poll low as Trump tightens grip on primary

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      Donald Trump may be in legal trouble over his alleged weakness for vice, but his predicament is increasingly placing Ron DeSantis – his chief rival for the Republican presidential nomination – in a political vise.The Florida governor must join Republican attacks on Alvin Bragg, the Democratic Manhattan district attorney whose indictment of Trump over a hush money payment to a porn star is reportedly imminent, while trying not to lose ground in a primary he has not formally entered.DeSantis has floated criticism of Trump over the hush money payment but on Tuesday a new poll showed how Trump, who is also fundraising off his legal peril, has tightened his grip on the primary race.The Morning Consult survey shows the former president has 54% support among likely primary voters and DeSantis has 26%, tying his lowest score since the poll began in December.The two men are still way ahead of the rest of the field. Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, was third in the Morning Consult poll, with 7%, three points ahead of Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor.Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming representative who lost her seat after turning against Trump over the January 6 attack on Congress, and who has not ruled out a run, had 3% support. No one else, including likely candidates Mike Pompeo and Tim Scott, got more than a point.Like DeSantis, Pence has not declared a run but is seen to be positioning himself to do so. In a telling detail, Morning Consult noted that Pence’s favorability rating “declined from 60% to 55% during a week that featured news coverage of his condemnation of Trump’s behavior surrounding the January 6 attack”.Speaking to reporters in Florida on Monday, DeSantis was asked to comment on Trump’s looming indictment in the Stormy Daniels affair.Using a common rightwing attack line with antisemitic overtones, he condemned Bragg as a puppet of the progressive philanthropist George Soros.But DeSantis also took a shot at Trump, saying: “I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair. I just – I can’t speak to that.”Trump responded with typical aggression, recycling an attack line questioning DeSantis’s behaviour around young women when he was a teacher but also insinuating the governor might be gay.The following day, a close Trump ally warned of worse to come.“If you start this thing,” the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham told Fox News, “you better be willing to take it. I don’t like it. You know, Trump is not into ‘Thou shall nots’. That’s not his thing.”DeSantis did not seem to listen, repeating his hush money jab to the British journalist Piers Morgan in an interview for Fox Nation excerpted in the New York Post.“There’s a lot of speculation about what [Trump’s] underlying conduct is,” DeSantis said. “[The payoff] is purported to be it and the reality is that’s just outside my wheelhouse. I mean that’s just not something that I can speak to.”Morgan wrote: “The message was clear: I’m nothing like Trump when it comes to sleazy behaviour.”DeSantis also said he would have handled Covid “different” to Trump, including firing the senior adviser Anthony Fauci and claimed that he governed without “daily drama”.He also called Trump’s attacks “background noise” and mocked the former president’s nicknames for him, saying: “I don’t know how to spell the [De]sanctimonious one. I don’t really know what it means, but I kinda like it, it’s long, it’s got a lot of vowels … you can call me whatever you want, just as long as you also call me a winner.”For leaders, DeSantis said, Americans “really want to look to people like our founding fathers, like what type of character … are you bringing?”Trump had switched from flattery to attacking him, DeSantis said, because “the major thing that’s happened that’s changed his tune was my re-election victory”.DeSantis beat the Democrat Charlie Crist by a landslide in November.Amid it all, the Morning Consult poll contained another worrying message for Republicans in general.According to the poll, if Trump were the nominee he would lose a head-to-head with Joe Biden by three points, 44% to 41%. If the Republican nominee were DeSantis, he would lose by one point less. More

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      Taiwan president to visit Latin American allies with stops in US

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      Taiwan’s president will visit diplomatic allies Guatemala and Belize next week while also making stopovers in the United States, as it aims to shore up ties in Latin America.Tsai Ing-wen will depart Taiwan on 29 March for the 10-day trip, stopping in New York and Los Angeles while en route to and from the Central American countries, the island’s ministry said on Tuesday.Belize and Guatemala are two of just 14 countries that officially recognise Taiwan over China, and Tsai’s trip comes after Honduras said earlier this month that it would be switching recognition to Beijing.China views self-ruled, democratic Taiwan as part of its territory, to be retaken one day – by force if necessary. Under its “One China” principle, no country may maintain official diplomatic relations with both China and Taiwan.During her trip, President Tsai will meet her Guatemalan counterpart Alejandro Giammattei and Belize’s prime minister Johnny Briceño, the foreign ministry said.Asked if Tsai would meet US House speaker Kevin McCarthy in Los Angeles, deputy foreign minister Alexander Yui said only that her “transit itinerary is being arranged appropriately with the US side”.McCarthy said earlier this month that he would see Tsai in his home state of California.On Tuesday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin reiterated his country’s opposition to Tsai meeting with US officials.“We firmly oppose any form of official exchanges between the US and Taiwan,” he told a press briefing in Beijing. “China has made solemn representations to the US in this regard.”In Washington, state department spokesman Vedant Patel downplayed the significance of Tsai’s transit and said it was normal for Taiwanese dignitaries to meet members of Congress or hold public events while on US stopovers.“Transits are taken out of consideration for the safety and comfort and convenience and dignity of the passenger and are consistent with our One China policy, which also remains unchanged,” Patel told reporters.Washington is one of Taiwan’s key global allies and its largest arms supplier, despite itself switching diplomatic recognition to Beijing in 1979.In August of last year, a visit by McCarthy’s predecessor Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan drew condemnation from China, which conducted massive military drills around the island in response.McCarthy has vowed also to visit Taiwan but the stopover could give him an opportunity to sidestep a potentially explosive trip.Tsai’s trip comes at a critical time for Taiwan, after the Honduran president, Xiomara Castro, said last week that her country would establish “official relations” with China.Latin America has been a key diplomatic battleground for China and Taiwan since the two split in 1949 after a civil war.Honduras’s move – which would result in the severing of longstanding official ties with Taiwan – followed negotiations between it and China on building a hydroelectric dam in the country.It continues a trend in the region, with Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica all switching diplomatic recognition to Beijing in recent years. More

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      Birchers review: how the Republican far right gave us Trump and DeSantis

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      Out of sight but not forgotten, the John Birch Society is a husk of its old self. Still, its penchant for conspiracy theories courses in the veins of the American right. A mere 37% of Republicans believe Joe Biden beat Donald Trump legitimately. “January 6, I think, is probably second only to the 2020 election as the biggest scam in my lifetime,” says Tucker Carlson, the face of Fox News.Back in the day, the society trashed Dwight D Eisenhower and his successor as president, John F Kennedy. That Ike and JFK were war heroes made no difference. They were suspect. Eisenhower attempted to navigate around the Birchers. Kennedy used them as a foil. Dallas, where JFK was assassinated, was a Bircher hotbed.“Birchers charged that President Eisenhower abetted the communists, distributed flyers calling President John F Kennedy a traitor, and repudiated Nato,” Matthew Dallek writes in his in-depth examination of the society’s rise, fall and continued relevance.Dallek, a professor at George Washington University, is the son of Robert Dallek, a legendary presidential biographer. Under the subtitle How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right, Dallek’s book is quick-paced and well researched. However troubling, it is a joy to read.Dallek argues convincingly that despite the end of the cold war, amid which the Birchers were born, its antipathies and suspicions continue to animate and inflame, a reality Trump and his minions remember and Democrats forget at their peril.Dallek looks at how the Birchers’ ideas came to pollenate and populate the Republican party. It didn’t happen randomly or suddenly. The society never disappeared and nor did its ideas and resentments. The “quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq” coupled with the “financial crisis and Great Recession” breathed fresh currency into isolationism, nativism and scorn for elites.Founded in 1958, at a secret meeting in Indianapolis led by Robert Welch, the candy manufacturer, the group took its name from a missionary and intelligence officer killed in 1945 by communists in China. Birch’s Christianity and the circumstances of his death were central to the society’s message.Original members included Fred C Koch, founder of Koch Industries and father of Charles and David, the hard-right political activists and billionaire donors.“In the 1930s [Fred Koch] had helped build oil refineries, first in Stalin’s Soviet Union and then in Hitler’s Germany, and his brushes with both regimes shaped his cold war philosophy,” Dallek writes.“In the USSR, he knew people who had been purged by Stalin … In contrast, he liked what he saw when he inspected his refineries in Nazi Germany.”Fascism came with the trappings of prosperity. These days, the Koch-funded Quincy Institute takes a dim view of US and western assistance to Ukraine.The John Birch Society is now obscure yet basks in undreamed-of success. Instead of railing against fluoridated water and embracing laetrile (an apricot derivative) as a cancer cure, the Birchers’ intellectual heirs dump on the Covid vaccine, roll the dice on polio and worship ivermectin as a miracle drug.Ron DeSantis, Florida governor and Trump mini-me, is all in with his nonstop attack on modernity and vaccination. Trump no longer reminds voters of Operation Warp Speed, the great success in combating the latest plague.The mortality gap between precincts populated by red and blue America says plenty, but Republican animus to vaccine mandates appears baked in. Fringy need not mean down and out. Just look at Ginni Thomas and her husband, Clarence Thomas, the conservative supreme court justice.Ginni Thomas, a longtime far-right activist entangled in Trump’s attempt to overturn the election up to and including January 6, grew up nestled in comfort. As Dallek points out, many in the Birchers’ ranks possessed a firm foothold in the middle and upper-middle classes.“A childhood neighbor recalled that Ginni Thomas’s parents were active in a losing 1968 referendum campaign in Omaha to ban putting fluoride in the water supply,” Dallek notes.“My Republican parents, who knew them well, certainly considered them Birchers,” the journalist Kurt Andersen recalls.Dallek reminds us of the bookstores opened by the society and the role played by female Birchers. Phyllis Schlafly, the great hard-right crusader, was a Bircher as well as a Harvard grad. She opposed the Voting Rights Act, wrote Barry Goldwater’s 1964 manifesto and successfully opposed the Equal Rights Amendment.Aloise Josephine Antonia Steiner, a non-Birch conservative and the mother of William Buckley, the founder of the National Review, encouraged an acquaintance to establish a society chapter. Buckley eventually – and circuitously – came to stand against the Birchers. Welch heaped praise on his mom.Race was always near the surface. The society attacked Brown v Board of Education, the 1954 supreme court decision which held that de jure racially segregated schools were unequal and unconstitutional. The Birchers, as Dallek recounts, branded the decision “procommunist”.Even now, Brown sticks in the craw on the right. Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump supreme court appointee, refers to Brown as inviolate super-precedent but Mollie Hemingway of the Federalist and Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network both attack its underpinnings.Decisions such as Brown, they wrote after the confirmation fight over Brett Kavanaugh, another Trump-picked conservative justice, “may have been correct in their result but were decided on the basis of sociological studies rather than legal principles”.“May”? Let that sink in.Another Republican primary is upon us. Trump again leads the way. The furor over his dinner with Ye, the antisemitic recording artist formerly known as Kanye West, and Nick Fuentes, the white supremacist, recedes. DeSantis loses ground. Authenticity and charisma matter. The governor parrots Trump and Carlson on Ukraine, flip-flopping in the process.Yet no other Republican comes close. The John Birch Society is still winning big.
      Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right is published in the US by Hachette More

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      The Guardian view on Iraq, 20 years on: the costs of war | Editorial

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      It did not take long for anyone to realise that the Iraq war was the disaster that many had predicted; not much longer than it took to confirm that it was launched on a lie and that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Whatever relief or joy was felt by Iraqis at the fall of Saddam Hussein’s violent and oppressive regime, it was soon subsumed by the horror of what followed. The body count and wider damage have not stopped rising since. When the 10th anniversary arrived, Islamic State (IS), birthed by the war’s fallout, had yet to make its frightening rise to establishing a “caliphate”. Two decades on from the beginning of the war, with the “shock and awe” assault of 19 March 2003, we are still fathoming the impact of the US-led and UK-backed invasion.The toll has been felt most of all, of course, within Iraq itself. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died in the violence that followed. The Costs of War project estimates that several times as many may have died from knock-on effects. More than 9 million Iraqis were displaced. Thousands of coalition personnel, mostly American, were killed. Trillions of dollars that could have been spent on improving lives were instead squandered destroying them. Much of the Pentagon spending went to just five huge corporations.The catastrophe was compounded by the failure to plan for what came next. Iraqis watched as power stations and national treasures were looted, while American troops guarded the oil ministry and Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, glibly dismissed the turmoil: “Freedom’s untidy”. The security vacuum and de-Ba’athification strategy fomented sectarianism not only in Iraq itself, but far beyond its borders – and fuelled terrorism that has proved not only most deadly in the region, but has taken lives in the west, too. Later decisions such as support for Nouri al-Maliki made matters worse.The invasion curtailed hopes of stabilising Afghanistan, by drawing away attention, resources and troops. It strengthened and emboldened Iran. It reinforced North Korea’s conviction that it was essential to acquire and defend WMDs. It hastened the end of the brief unipolar moment and undercut visions of a rules‑based global order. A military adventure conceived by many of its players as a brash reassertion of US supremacy in the wake of the September 11 attacks only weakened and undermined the country – all the more so after the horrors of Abu Ghraib and wider brutality against civilians. Russia and China took note. So did the global south, hindering efforts to garner support for Ukraine. It was hardly the first time America’s foreign policy had clashed with its declared ideals, but it had not been so public and inescapable since Vietnam. Liberal interventionism was badly discredited. The refugee flows produced by regional instability, along with IS-led or -inspired attacks in Europe, contributed to growing ethno-nationalism and fuelled support for Brexit.Iraq currently appears relatively calm. But US troops are still present due to the ongoing battle against IS. Though there is now a government, following a year of deadlock after elections and an outburst of violence in Baghdad, the state remains unable to keep the lights on or provide clean water. Politicians and officials have pocketed billions.More than half of Iraqis are too young to remember life under Saddam Hussein. Some now aspire to a society and government that looks beyond sectarianism and towards a brighter future, as the 2019 Tishreen movement, and the re-emergence of participants in 2021’s elections, showed. Yet the low turnout underscored that others have given up on democracy, thanks to those who boasted that they were bringing it to justify their war. It may be many more years before we fully reckon the effects of the catastrophe unleashed two decades ago. More

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      Leo Varadkar meets Biden after apparent Clinton-Lewinsky joke

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      Ireland’s taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has apologised for making an apparent joke about Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, during an event in Washington on the eve of St Patrick’s Day celebrations.Varadkar’s comment on Thursday risked overshadowing his meeting with Joe Biden at the White House on Friday for the traditional handing over of a bowl of shamrock to the US president, the most important day in the Irish-American political calendar.The taoiseach departed from a prepared script on Thursday when speaking to people involved in the Washington Ireland programme, which teaches career skills to young people. Reminiscing about his stint as a US House of Representatives intern in 2000, the last year of Clinton’s presidency, Varadkar said it was a time “when some parents would have had cause for concern about what would happen to interns in Washington”.The comment was widely viewed as a reference to Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky while she was a White House intern in the mid-1990s. Hours earlier, Varadkar had shared a stage with Hillary Clinton at a separate event.A spokesperson for Varadkar apologised on his behalf.“He made an ill-judged, off-the-cuff remark which he regrets. He apologises for any offence caused to anyone concerned,” they said.The taoiseach is to meet and share platforms with the Clintons when the couple visit Ireland next month to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement. Biden also plans to visit.Senior Democrats this week urged Democratic Unionist party (DUP) figures visiting Washington to restore power-sharing in Northern Ireland in the wake of the Windsor framework, saying it had addressed the party’s concerns over post-Brexit trading arrangements.Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, expressed hope that the Stormont institutions would be swiftly revived. Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said the DUP should “get to the people’s business, the business of power-sharing and self-governing”.The DUP leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, rebuked Schumer, telling Sky: “I would urge the senator to read some history books. Maybe he’d learn a little bit more about what really happens and the reality of the situation.”Hillary Clinton increased the pressure on the DUP when she urged assembly members who opposed the Windsor framework to resign and allow others to revive Stormont.On Friday, Varadkar met Biden’s vice-president, Kamala Harris, at her residence in Washington. Varadkar’s apparent gaffe over Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky was not mentioned but the Windsor framework was.The agreement, the taoiseach said, “has the potential to restore very good relations between Ireland and the UK and to restore the relations and institutions of the Good Friday agreement” while opening a new chapter in EU-UK relations.“We’re not quite there yet,” Varadkar said. “But I think with good faith on all sides, we’ll have that and the help of our … friends here in America.”Varadkar also thanked Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, for hosting him and his partner, Matthew Barrett. They had been “inspired”, he said, both as doctors and members of the LGBTQ+ community, by Harris’s advocacy for marriage equality as a California prosecutor and senator, and now as vice-president.Varadkar said: “From Stonewall [the riots in New York in 1969 that sparked the modern gay rights movement] to Sacramento to San Francisco, America has led the way when it comes to LGBTQ+ equality. I don’t think I would be here today were it not for what America did.”From there, the taoiseach went to the White House to meet Biden.Before the Oval Office meeting, the president sent out a St Patrick’s Day tweet in which he proudly introduced himself as “the great-great-grandson of the Blewitts of County Mayo and the Finnegans of County Louth who boarded a coffin ship to cross the Atlantic more than 165 years ago” and as “the proud son of Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden”.Coffin ships were vessels that took Irish immigrants to America during the Great Famine of the 1840s, so called, in the words of the writer Philip Hoare, “because so many of their human cargo died of disease or malnutrition en route, or shortly after arrival”.In front of the press on Friday, Biden referred to a recent meeting in San Diego with Rishi Sunak, the British prime minister, saying: “I very much, very strongly supported the Windsor framework, which I know you do too.”Varadkar thanked Biden “for your help and support and understanding for our position on Brexit in recent years”, which he said “really made a difference.“And we’ve got to a good place now, I think, with the Windsor framework where we can have an agreement that lasts, which is important for Northern Ireland, and also important for British-Irish and European relations.” More