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      Trump attorney general Barr a liar, bully and thug, says fired US attorney in book

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      Trump attorney general Barr a liar, bully and thug, says fired US attorney in bookIn memoir, Geoffrey Berman recounts clashes before a botched firing he insists was politically motivated Donald Trump’s second attorney general, William Barr, is stupid, a liar, a bully and a thug, according to a hard-hitting new book by Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney for the southern district of New York whose firing Barr engineered in hugely controversial fashion in summer 2020.Mar-a-Lago a magnet for spies, officials warn after nuclear file reportedly foundRead more“Several hours after Barr and I met,” Berman writes, “on a Friday night, [Barr] issued a press release saying that I was stepping down. That was a lie.“A lie told by the nation’s top law enforcement officer.”Trump’s politicization of the US Department of Justice was a hot-button issue throughout his presidency. It remains so as he claims persecution under Barr’s successor, Merrick Garland, regarding the mishandling of classified information, the Capitol attack and multiple other investigations.Berman describes his own ordeal, as Barr sought a more politically pliant occupant of the hugely powerful New York post, in Holding the Line: Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and its Battle with the Trump Justice Department, a memoir to be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Berman testified in Congress shortly after his dismissal. He now writes: “No one from SDNY with knowledge of [his clashes with Barr over two and a half years] has been interviewed or written about them. Until now, there has not been a firsthand account.”Berman describes clashes on issues including the prosecution of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, and the Halkbank investigation, concerning Turkish bankers and government officials helping Tehran circumvent the Iran nuclear deal.Barr was also attorney general under George HW Bush. He has published his own book, One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General, in which he discusses SDNY affairs but does not mention Berman. Promoting the book, Barr told NBC he “didn’t really think that much about” his former adversary.Berman calls that “an easily disprovable lie”.In Berman’s book, Barr is a constant presence. Describing the Halkbank case, Berman says Trump’s closeness to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president, meant Barr was, “always eager to please his boss, appeared to be doing Trump’s bidding” by leaning on Berman to drop charges.Berman says Barr told him he, Barr, would be “point person” for the administration on Halkbank, which Berman found “odd”.“This is a criminal case being run out of New York, right? As attorney general, Barr had a role to play. But why as White House-designated point person? That was problematic.”Berman says Barr tried to block the SDNY to benefit Trump politically. In June 2019, he says, he was summoned to a meeting where Barr told him the Halkbank case “implicates foreign policy” and, “his voice … steadily rising”, asked: “Who do you think you are to interfere?”He writes: “I’ve seen bullies work before. In fact he had used the same words with me a little more than a year before” over the appointment of Berman’s deputy, Audrey Strauss, without Barr’s approval.Berman adds: “I would describe Barr’s posture that morning as thuggish. He wanted to bludgeon me into submission.”Berman turned Barr down. He also says he told Barr a proposal to offer individuals in the Halkbank case a non-prosecution agreement without disclosing the move would be “a fraud on the court”.The Halkbank issue eventually dropped away, after Trump and Erdoğan fell out over the US withdrawal from Syria. But Barr and Berman’s enmity remained.Berman also gives his version of events in June 2020, when Barr summoned him to a meeting at the Pierre hotel in New York City.William Barr told Murdoch to ‘muzzle’ Fox News Trump critic, new book saysRead moreBerman first delivers a sharp aside about Barr’s ostentatious travel, his apparent ambitions – Berman speculates that the attorney general wanted to be secretary of state in Trump’s second term – and an infamous, secretive meeting between Barr and Rupert Murdoch that Berman calls “a scene right out of HBO’s Succession”.Berman says he did not know why Barr wanted to meet him, but thought it might be because he had refused to sign a letter attacking Bill de Blasio, then mayor of New York, over the application of Covid restrictions to religious services and protests for racial justice. Berman did not sign, he writes, because he could not be seen to act politically.At the Pierre, he says, Barr, who with his chief of staff was not wearing a mask indoors, said he wanted to “make a change in the southern district”. Berman says he knew what would come next, given changes elsewhere to instal Barr allies and moves to influence investigations of Trump aides including Roger Stone and Michael Flynn.“The reason Barr wanted me to resign immediately was so I could be replaced with an outsider he trusted,” Berman writes, adding that he was sure he could be removed other than by the judges who appointed him to fill the office on an interim basis in 2018, or by Senate confirmation of a successor.Berman turned down Barr’s offer. He says Barr then made an “especially tawdry” suggestion: that if Berman moved to run the DoJ civil division, “I could leverage it to make more money after I left government”. Berman says Barr also asked if he had civil litigation experience, a question Berman deems “almost comical”. Then Barr threatened to fire him.Berman “thought to myself, what a gross and colossal bully this guy is to threaten my livelihood”. He did not budge. Barr said he would think of other jobs. After the meeting, Berman writes, Barr asked if he would like to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. Berman says that job “was not [Barr’s] to offer”, as the SEC chair is nominated by the president and Senate confirmed.Berman says he agreed to talk to Barr again after the weekend. Instead, that night Barr issued a press release saying Berman had agreed to resign.“It was a lie, plain and simple,” Berman writes. “I clearly told him I was not stepping down. Barr [was] the attorney general … in addition to being honest, he should be smart. And this was really stupid on his part – a complete miscalculation … he should have known at this point that I was not going to go quietly.”William Barr’s Trump book: self-serving narratives and tricky truths ignoredRead moreIn a press release of his own, Berman said he had not resigned. The next day he showed up for work, greeted by a swarm of reporters. Then, in a public letter Berman now calls “an idiotic diatribe”, Barr said Berman had been fired by Trump.Barr did drop a plan to replace Berman with an acting US attorney, instead allowing Berman’s deputy, Strauss, to succeed him. Berman says that enabled him to step aside in good conscience. He calls Barr’s move a “surrender”.Berman describes both his belief he was fired because his independence represented “a threat to Trump’s re-election” and Trump’s insistence to reporters on the day of the firing that he had not fired Berman – Barr had.“Barr’s attempt to push me out,” he writes, “was so bungled that he and Trump couldn’t even get their stories straight.”TopicsBooksWilliam BarrUS politicsDonald TrumpLaw (US)RepublicansTrump administrationnewsReuse this content More

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      Mar-a-Lago a magnet for spies, officials warn after nuclear file reportedly found

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      Mar-a-Lago a magnet for spies, officials warn after nuclear file reportedly foundFormer intelligence chiefs say national security officials are ‘shaking their heads at what damage might have been done’ Mar-a-Lago – the Palm Beach resort and residence where Donald Trump reportedly stored nuclear secrets among a trove of highly classified documents for 18 months since leaving the White House – is a magnet for foreign spies, former intelligence officials have warned.FBI found document on foreign nuclear defenses at Mar-a-Lago – reportRead moreThe Washington Post reported that a document describing an unspecified foreign government’s defences, including its nuclear capabilities, was one of the many highly secret papers Trump took away from the White House when he left office in January 2021.There were also documents marked SAP, for Special-Access Programmes, which are often about US intelligence operations and whose circulation is severely restricted, even among administration officials with top security clearance.Potentially most disturbing of all, there were papers stamped HCS, Humint Control Systems, involving human intelligence gathered from agents in enemy countries, whose lives would be in danger if their identities were compromised.The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is conducting a damage assessment review which is focused on the sensitivity of the documents, but US officials said it is the job of FBI counter-intelligence to assess who may have gained access to them.That is a wide field. The home of a former president with a history of being enthralled by foreign autocrats, distrustful of US security services, and boastful about his knowledge of secrets, is an obvious foreign intelligence target.“I know that national security professionals inside government, my former colleagues, [they] are shaking their heads at what damage might have been done,” John Brennan, former CIA director, told MSNBC.“I’m sure Mar-a-Lago was being targeted by Russian intelligence and other intelligence services over the course of the last 18 or 20 months, and if they were able to get individuals into that facility, and access those rooms where those documents were and made copies of those documents, that’s what they would do.”US investigates fake heiress who infiltrated Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resortRead moreLast month, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project reported that a Russian-speaking immigrant from Ukraine was able to mingle with the former president’s family and friends at Mar-a-Lago, posing as Anna de Rothschild, presenting herself as being an heiress of the banking dynasty.Inna Yashchyshyn, the daughter of a truck driver who emigrated to Canada, regaled those around her with tales of vineyards and estates and growing up in Monaco, and even met the former president in person, getting herself photographed with him on a golfing green.There is no evidence that Yashchyshyn was a spy, but the episode underlined how easy it is to get into Mar-a-Lago. During Trump’s presidency, two Chinese women were caught trespassing there on separate occasions.One of them, Yujing Zhang, was in possession of four mobile phones, a laptop, an external hard drive, and a thumb drive later found to carry malware. In her hotel room, investigators found nine USB drives, five SIM cards and a “signal detector” device for spotting hidden microphones or cameras. She was found guilty of unlawfully entering a restricted building and making false statements to a federal officer, and deported to China in 2021.The guests, invited or otherwise, are not the only security concern. In 2021, the Trump Organization sought 87 foreign workers for positions at Mar-a-Lago, with wages starting at $11.96 an hour.“Any competent foreign intelligence service, whether those belonging to China, those belonging to Iran, to Cuba, certainly including Russia are … and were interested in gaining access to Mar-a-Lago,” Peter Strzok, former deputy assistant director of counter-intelligence at the FBI, told MSNBC.TopicsMar-a-LagoFBIUS politicsDonald TrumpNuclear weaponsnewsReuse this content More

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      The Democrats’ best message for the midterms: democracy is in grave peril | Osita Nwanevu

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      The Democrats’ best message for the midterms: democracy is in grave perilOsita NwanevuRepublicans’ efforts to delegitimize the electoral process should trouble us greatly. Democrats ought to hammer this home We’re nearing the end of a summer that’s been a real boon for the Biden administration and Democrats in Washington. The White House finally announced a partial student loan forgiveness plan that will deliver some long-awaited relief to millions of borrowers. The Dobbs decision in June and its aftermath have triggered a public backlash that’s reinforced support for abortion rights and opened the eyes of many Americans to the pro-life movement’s radicalism on the issue. The Department of Justice is evidently in the middle of a quite serious investigation into Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents ⁠— one that’s put him at the top of the headlines again in spectacular fashion and may well end in his prosecution. And, most consequentially, after a months-long stalemate, Congress managed to pass a flawed, but genuinely historic bill ⁠— the hilariously and shrewdly named Inflation Reduction Act, which happens to be, among other things, the largest single climate package ever passed by any country.All these developments have fueled optimism that November’s midterms might not be as bad for Democrats as many have feared. And there’s some evidence that the party really has gotten a bounce: according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average, Democrats have taken a narrow lead on the generic congressional ballot for the first time since last fall. Still, history strongly suggests Democrats are likely to lose at least the House. The party holding the White House has lost House seats ⁠— 26 on average ⁠— in all but two midterms since World War II. Republicans only need to gain four in order to take the chamber this year. And despite better numbers for Democrats as a whole, the polls suggest voters are still down on both President Biden and the state of the economy, although things might change a bit on both fronts as inflation eases.It’s doubtful rhetoric alone will shorten the long odds Democrats face heading into November. But it’s worth thinking through what the strongest possible message for the party might be. As it stands, their main focal point, beyond Congress’ accomplishments thus far in Biden’s term, has been the threat Donald Trump and his allies pose to the democratic process. Last week, Biden kicked off campaign season in earnest with a major address on just that subject. “Maga Republicans do not respect the Constitution,” he told his audience in Philadelphia. “They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now ⁠— as I speak, in state after state ⁠— to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.”Democrats’ hopes rise for midterms amid backlash over abortion accessRead moreWhile his critics in the press have called the speech divisive and overly partisan, Biden went out of his way to absolve most Republicans from responsibility for the January 6th attack and Trump’s wrongdoing. “Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are Maga Republicans,” he said. “Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology. I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.” And one of the most prominent promoters of the Democratic line recently has been a Republican who Biden wants Americans to consider representative of the party. “I feel sad about where my party is, “ Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney said in an interview last month. “I feel sad about the way that too many of my colleagues have responded to what I think is a great moral test and challenge of our time – a great moment to determine whether or not people are going to stand up on behalf of the democracy, on behalf of our republic.” But while thousands of Democrats switched parties to back her against Harriet Hageman, a Trump-endorsed candidate and former Trump critic who’s supported his election claims, Cheney was handily defeated in her primary by more than 30 points — more proof, as though we really needed it, that Trumpism is the Republican Party’s mainstream. In suggesting otherwise, Biden intends to send the American people a partially defensible message ⁠— that support for democracy and the rule of law are principles that should transcend our political affiliations. And they should. But democracy and the rule of law aren’t just abstract ideals ⁠— they’re the means by which we solve our material problems. Republican efforts to usurp and delegitimize the electoral process should trouble us not just because they’re unfair and destabilizing, but because they advance the interests of the wealthy and powerful, who benefit from the conservative policy agenda. By attacking our elections and the right to vote, conservatives hope to rob us of opportunities to shore up and empower working class Americans on issues from health care to labor rights. And this is the point Democrats should emphasize ⁠— especially given that the pivotal constituencies in the electorate, swing and Trump-curious voters, are clearly ambivalent about, or willing to overlook, Republican violations of democratic norms.It’s encouraging that Biden himself seems to understand this on some level. In his speech, Biden said that Trump’s supporters in the Republican party “spread fear and lies […] told for profit and power.” Later, he added that the “soul of America” is defined by egalitarian principles ⁠— “that all deserve justice and a shot at lives of prosperity and consequence,” he said, “and that democracy must be defended, for democracy makes all these things possible.” This passage echoed remarks he’d made during the signing of the IRA, which he touted as an example of what can get done when democracy works as it should. “It’s about delivering progress and prosperity to American families,” he said of the bill. “It’s about showing the American people that democracy still works in America — notwithstanding all the talk of its demise — not just for the privileged few, but for all of us.”Of course, the process of getting to the IRA colorfully illustrated some of the ways democracy isn’t really working in America. Thanks to the power afforded to one very stubborn man from West Virginia in the Senate, popular policies like paid leave and more expansive climate measures were left on the chopping block. And the anticipated emissions reductions in the IRA will, like the long-troubled Medicaid expansion component of the Affordable Care Act, depend largely on the cooperation of state governments that are controlled by Republicans across much of the country and are working to disenfranchise Democratic voters. Components of the For the People Act ⁠— now ancient history politically speaking ⁠— would have gone some way towards evening out the already-skewed playing field in the states and combatting Republican voter suppression efforts. Its failure is one of the signal disappointments of this Congress. And Democrats will only get another crack at it, in another majority, if they manage to convince voters that the fight for democracy is, in fact, a partisan and material struggle ⁠— a fight against a party that cannot be redeemed and is animated in its attacks on our norms and elections by more than just loyalty to Donald Trump.Liz Cheney, heralded now as a profile in courage, should be presented by Democrats as an object lesson here. It genuinely matters that she backed Trump with her votes over 90% of the time over the course of her tenure in the House, including her opposition to Trump’s first impeachment. It was doubtless as obvious to her as it was to most Americans that Trump was dangerous, and it can’t have been much of a surprise that a man who lied about voter fraud in an election he had won in 2016 went on to assail the democratic process after his loss. But she stood with him ⁠— willing to indulge his abuses of power up until, almost literally, the last minute ⁠— because he was implementing policies she supports.Cheney’s turn against Trump was less an indictment of his character than a vote of no confidence, after his loss, in his remaining utility to the party. And while few Republicans have been as bold in repudiating him, there’s palpable interest among the right’s powers that be in potential successors like Ron DeSantis, who’s winning plaudits from high-profile Trump critics like The Atlantic’s David Frum even as he echoes Trump’s anti-democratic rhetoric and conspiracy theories from his perch in Florida. The simple truth is that most of the Republicans and conservatives Biden prefers still place protecting the power of capital well above protecting democracy and the rule of law on their list of concerns. That’s not an argument that will bring Americans together. But realistically, nothing will. And politics is, at the end of the day, about presenting voters with clear choices and stakes. The Democrats have a powerful case to make: return them to power and they’ll do what they can to safeguard democracy from a Republican party fully and irretrievably controlled by bosses and billionaires intent on dominating ordinary Americans. That message might not work magic in time for the midterms. But it’s worth a shot.
      Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsDemocratsOpinionRepublicansJoe BidenUS midterm elections 2022US politicsDonald TrumpcommentReuse this content More

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      US senator rejects Israeli army report on killing of Palestinian American reporter

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      US senator rejects Israeli army report on killing of Palestinian American reporterChris Van Hollen calls for independent US inquiry, saying IDF claim Shireen Abu Aqleh died amid gun battle unsupported by evidence A US senator has dismissed an Israeli army report that claims a soldier accidentally killed the Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh in the midst of a gun battle, saying it is unsupported by the evidence.Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic senator for Maryland, repeated his call for an independent US investigation into Abu Aqleh’s killing in the West Bank in May, saying that the United Nations and reconstructions by major news outlets found that the Al Jazeera television journalist was not in the immediate vicinity of fighting with Palestinian militants and could not have been caught in the crossfire.US condemns Israel’s attack on Shireen Abu Aqleh’s funeralRead more“The crux of the ‘defense’ in this IDF [Israel Defence Forces] report is that a soldier was ‘returning fire’ from militants” when Abu Aqleh was struck, Van Hollen tweeted. “But investigations … found no such firing at the time. This underscores need for independent US inquiry into this American journalist’s death.”On Monday, more than four months after her killing, Israel finally admitted that it was “highly probable” that an Israeli soldier shot Abu Aqleh while she was reporting on a military raid on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.The report said Abu Aqleh was probably shot by an Israeli soldier who was under fire from a group of Palestinian gunmen. It claimed the soldier was using a telescopic sight and misidentified her as one from his armed opponents. The army said no crime was committed so no one will be prosecuted.However, eyewitness accounts and videos of Abu Aqleh and the area around her at the time of her killing do not show a gun battle. She was also wearing body armour and a helmet clearly labelled as “press”.A United Nations investigation said that Israeli soldiers fired “several single, seemingly well-aimed bullets” at Abu Aqleh and other journalists.Investigations by the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post and other media questioned the official Israeli version of events. The New York Times said there were “no armed Palestinians near her when she was shot” and that its investigation “contradicted Israeli claims that, if a soldier had mistakenly killed her, it was because he had been shooting at a Palestinian gunman”.The Committee to Protect Journalists called the Israeli report “late and incomplete”.“They provided no name for Shireen Abu [Aqleh’s] killer and no other information than his or her own testimony that the killing was a mistake,” it said.The White House pressured Israel to reveal its findings amid demands for an independent US investigation from some members of Congress and Abu Aqleh’s family which accused Joe Biden’s administration of covering for Israel. Critics noted that the report was released on the Labor Day public holiday in the US when it was likely to receive less attention.The journalist’s niece, Lina Abu Aqleh, said the family had no confidence in the Israeli report.“We could never expect any type of accountability or legitimate investigation from the very entity responsible for gunning down an unarmed and clearly identifiable journalist,” she said.The family said an independent American investigation was “the bare minimum the US government should do for one of their own citizens”. But it also called for an international criminal court investigation, calling Abu Aqleh’s killing a “war crime”.Critics say the Israeli military has a long history of dissembling and making false claims over the killings of civilians while waiting for attention to move elsewhere. But the Abu Aqleh family was able to maintain interest in the case, and pressure on the Biden White House, because she was a US citizen.Israel’s account shifted several times over the four months since the journalist was shot.Immediately after the killing, the Israeli prime minister at the time, Naftali Bennett, said it “appears likely that armed Palestinians, who were firing indiscriminately at the time, were responsible”.The Israeli embassy in Washington posted a tweet purportedly showing the Palestinian gunmen who killed Abu Aqleh and then deleted it. The Israeli government released footage that created the impression the journalist was in the midst of a major battle. The Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, released its own video showing that the government’s footage was filmed several blocks from where Abu Aqleh was shot.As criticism grew, Bennett’s office condemned “hasty accusations against Israel”, and pro-Israel pressure groups attacked media investigations of the killing which challenged the official version.During the following weeks, the Israeli army admitted that one of its soldiers may have been responsible but claimed it was not able to carry out a proper investigation because the Palestinian Authority would not cooperate and hand over the bullet that killed the journalist.The US state department said it welcomed the “review of this tragic incident”. But it faced criticism for sidestepping demands that the soldier or soldiers responsible be held to account and for instead calling for “policies and procedures to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future”.TopicsUS politicsIsraelPalestinian territoriesJournalist safetyMiddle East and north AfricanewsReuse this content More

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      Trouble for Trump’s Truth Social as investors back away from cash boost

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      Trouble for Trump’s Truth Social as investors back away from cash boostInjection of $1.3bn for former president’s media company looks set to be derailed because of lackluster investor support Donald Trump’s beleaguered social media company is facing further financial turmoil after a long-awaited $1.3bn cash injection looks set to be derailed due to lackluster investor backing.Shareholders of the special purpose acquisitions firm, which last year brokered a deal to take the Trump Media and Technology Group public, have not backed a one-year extension to complete the transaction, which threatens to spoil the merger.Trump Media and Technology Group is the company that launched the ex-president’s Truth Social platform.The $1.3bn cash infusion from Digital World Acquisition Corp has been on hold since last October due to civil and criminal investigations into the circumstances around the merger. The Nasdaq-listed acquisitions company requires the support of 65% of shareholders, who are mostly individual investors, for the extension it needs to try to secure the deal.The outcome of the vote will be announced at a special shareholders meeting on Tuesday, when it is likely to be more bad news for the former president. Digital World executives do not believe they will be able to muster enough shareholder support in time and have started to consider alternative options, Reuters reported.Options include a unilateral six-month extension against the wishes of shareholders, and another is extending the final vote deadline to attempt mustering up more support in hopes that the Financial Regulatory Authority and US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will soon give the green light for the deal to proceed.If Digital World fails to come up with a stopgap solution before Tuesday’s shareholder meeting, it will be forced to liquidate its shares and return the money it raised in its initial public offering.Digital World, a so-called blank check company created specifically for the purpose of acquiring or merging with an existing business, has previously said that Trump’s media group has “sufficient funds” until April 2023.Trump leveraged his vast social media following throughout his presidency to fire up his base, rile opponents and hire and fire staff – a modus operandi which eventually led to his banishment from the most popular platforms.Trump has more than 4 million followers on Truth Social, where has been posting since April, which is just a fraction of the 89 million he had on Twitter. Twitter and Facebook banned Trump after his supporters staged the deadly January 2021 attack on the US Capitol in a desperate attempt to prevent the congressional certification of his defeat to Joe Biden in the previous year’s election.The app is currently available to download on Apple’s app store, and it was recently banned from Google Play where the vast majority of apps are downloaded for Android users. Google said the platform violates its policies on banning content that involves physical threats and could incite violence.It is unclear how Trump’s media company has been operating without access to Digital World’s funding, but last week it said that Truth Social is “on strong financial footing” and would soon begin running advertisements.Reuters contributed to this reportTopicsUS newsDonald TrumpUS politicsAppsnewsReuse this content More

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      Peace Talks Essential as War Rages on in Ukraine

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      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

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      No doomsday bunker, not a single gun – if the US really is heading for civil war, I’m stuffed | Arwa Mahdawi

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      No doomsday bunker, not a single gun – if the US really is heading for civil war, I’m stuffedArwa MahdawiThe super-rich are preparing to ride out the apocalypse by their underground swimming pools. Ordinary Americans have bought another 20m firearms. And me? I have a broom and a butter knife How long do you think you would survive if everything went to hell, civil war erupted, institutions crumbled and there was absolutely nowhere safe in the world left to run? Me, I’d give myself one week; maybe two. I would like to think that I’m a tough survivor type but the last time I went camping I forgot to bring a sleeping bag and sobbed myself to sleep, so on balance I would have to admit that I’m not. I did have a brief period this year when, in a fit of madness, I thought I’d take up urban farming and become as self-sufficient as is possible with a scrap of garden in Philadelphia. That seemed to go well until I proudly sent my mum a photo of all the luscious berry bushes I had cultivated and she informed me that they were poisonous weeds and I should get rid of them immediately. So, yeah, I don’t give myself great odds on surviving the apocalypse.I bring all this up because … well, I mean, look around you! Things are not great. In the UK, the cost of living crisis has become so extreme that ITV’s This Morning offered viewers the chance to get their energy bills paid on its Spin the Wheel segment. When people have to compete for basic necessities on daytime TV shows it’s generally not an indicator that your supposedly rich country is in a healthy state.But, to be fair, very few places are. More than 80% of countries are experiencing inflation of above 6%, leading to an unprecedented rise in civil unrest around the world, according to analysis published last week by a UK-based risk consulting firm. Out of 198 countries, Verisk Maplecrof reported, 101, including the UK, now have a heightened risk of conflict and instability. “We’re talking about numerous powder kegs around the world simply waiting for that spark to be ignited,” one of the company’s analysts told the Guardian. “We don’t know where that spark will come first.”A lot of sparks certainly seem to be flying in the US. Not so long ago people would have regarded you as a bit of a loon if you had said you thought civil war was imminent in the US. Not any more: more than 40% of Americans think civil war is at least somewhat likely in the next decade, according to a recent YouGov survey. Among strong Republicans (the people with all the guns), 54% said civil war was at least somewhat likely. Civil war is now casually discussed on cable TV shows in between ads for haemorrhoid creams and car insurance. “These days, it feels like we are not just at the brink of a civil war, but that one has already begun,” the host of a popular MSNBC show said during a Saturday segment titled Democracy in Danger. To back up her point, she showed clips of the Republican senator Lindsey Graham recently telling Fox News that “there will be riots in the street” if Donald Trump is prosecuted for mishandling classified records.Americans aren’t just worrying about civil war; they seem to be getting ready for it. The 1%, in particular, are snapping up doomsday bunkers equipped with stocked pantries and luxurious amenities. Which I find pretty hilarious, to be honest. Do billionaires really think that they’ll be able to sit out societal collapse by an underground pool? Who do they think is going to service that pool or cook for them?While billionaires are buying bunkers, the rest of the US seems to be buying ballistics. Firearm sales have rocketed since the pandemic. Americans bought almost 20m guns last year, which is down from 2020’s record-breaking 22.8m sales, but still incredibly alarming. I’m about as anti-gun as you can get, but lately I’ve found myself wondering if I should maybe learn how to shoot. After all, I don’t really rate my chances of surviving civil unrest in gun-nut America armed only with a broom, a butter knife and a garden full of poisonous berries.
      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionUK cost of living crisiscommentReuse this content More

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      ‘I’ve always had these crazy ideas’: the 25-year-old Uber driver bidding to become the first Gen Z member of Congress

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      Interview‘I’ve always had these crazy ideas’: the 25-year-old Uber driver bidding to become the first Gen Z member of CongressAndrew Lawrence Maxwell Alejandro Frost has been endorsed by Bernie Sanders and the gun-control activist has won a Democratic primary in Florida – but he still drives a taxi to make ends meet. Can he now make history?It’s been a decade since Maxwell Alejandro Frost launched his first big campaign. He was 15 years old, coming off a stint volunteering on Barack Obama’s reelection bid and desperate to attend the president’s second inauguration. In an online search for tickets, Frost stumbled across a page soliciting applications to perform in the inaugural parade. So he submitted what he thought was the perfect act to represent central Florida, the region he calls home: his nine-piece high-school salsa band, Seguro Que Sí (translation: “of course”). “I got some videos together, wrote about our band and how we would love to represent Florida and specifically the growing Latino population,” says Frost. Weeks later, he received a call while in class from the inaugural committee inviting his band to play if they could get a US senator to vouch for them and fund the trip to Washington DC themselves. When Frost totted up the costs of transport, lodging, food and the band’s float, he arrived at a figure of $13,000. His headteacher told him the school did not have the funds or the pull to make the trip happen and suggested backing out. But Frost was undaunted.He spent his Thanksgiving break doorstepping local businesses for donations and raised $5,000. He blitzed the office of Bill Nelson, Florida’s ranking US senator, with beseeching phone calls and, after two weeks, had his recommendation letter. Eventually, Frost’s school had a change of heart and added a matching pledge. Impressed, the inaugural committee picked up the cost of the float.On inauguration day, there was no missing Seguro Que Sí as they glided down Pennsylvania Avenue in matching black overcoats and red scarves, with Frost leading on the timbales. No sooner had the president and first lady heard them than they shot up from their seats to sway along. For Frost, the moment is a testament to the power of community organising. “Me and a bunch of teenagers got our band to DC, and we made the president dance,” Frost says. “I’ve always had these crazy ideas. Sometimes they work out. Sometimes they don’t.”Frost’s latest folly, running for a seat in the House of Representatives, seems to be working out so far, too. Last month he emerged from a field of 10 Democrats to comfortably win the primary for Florida’s 10th congressional district, which comprises a sizeable chunk of Orlando. This is after Val Demings, the thrice-elected Democratic incumbent, stepped down to challenge Marco Rubio’s US Senate seat.In a state where politics are increasingly defined by Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and other old, conservative white men, Frost cuts against the grain. An Afro-Cuban progressive who is barely old enough to legally hire a car, Frost fights for universal healthcare and against gun violence. (Which is to say: he’d fit right in with The Squad.) He wasn’t born into a political dynasty or educated at an Ivy League university. He was adopted at birth and went to college online – “before it was cool,” jokes the political science major, who is still a few credits short of finishing his degree. And despite raising more than $1.5m for the campaign, more than any candidate in the race by a wide margin, Frost doesn’t come from means. To make ends meet, he drives for Uber. In between, he keeps fuelled with a steady diet of egg, cheese and avocado sandwiches. (“I love breakfast sandwiches,” he gushes.) He hopes his campaign motivates more regular people to run for office.If Frost wins his seat in the midterm elections in November, it won’t just be a victory for the working class. It will also mark the first time a member of generation Z is voted to Congress. (Aged 25, he’s just old enough to legally run.) Ask Frost why he is chasing history instead of making TikToks, swiping right and otherwise whiling away his youth, and he will cite the inspiration he took from Amanda Litman, a former Hillary Clinton aide and founder of Run For Something, an organisation that encourages young progressives to enter politics. “She said: ‘You don’t run for office at 25 years old because it’s the next step in your career, or the thing you’ve been planning since you were in kindergarten or college. You run because there was a problem so piercing driving you, and you can’t imagine doing anything else with your time,’” he says. “For me, that encapsulates it. There’s so much work that needs to happen.”Frost has been at it for a while. After the school shooting at Sandy Hook in 2012, in which 20 children and six adults were killed, he started an organisation to end gun violence – a scourge that has become such a constant during his life that he refers to generation Z by a different name: “the mass shooting generation.” Even his post-primary mini-break to Charleston, South Carolina, was rocked by a pair of Labor Day weekend shootings – one downtown that left five people injured, and another that sent a 13-year-old to hospital.In recent years in Florida alone, there has been the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, (where 14 students and three staff members were killed), and the 2016 shooting at the gay Orlando nightclub, Pulse (which killed 49 people). Besides Obama’s reelection, Frost has volunteered on the political campaigns of Clinton and Bernie Sanders and worked for the ACLU. In 2018, he helped to pass Florida amendment 4, which restored voting rights to 1.5 million Floridians with felony convictions.Frost’s political endorsements run the gamut from Sanders to Parkland survivor David Hogg to the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, which fights for gun reform and abortion rights. But it was while he was national organising director of March for Our Lives – the group formed by Parkland student survivors – that Frost announced himself as a political star who would not be intimidated by gun-rights champions.He recounts how, while on a barnstorming awareness tour called Road to Change, he and his fellow activists were tailed by a group called the Utah Gun Exchange in an armoured car. It was scary, he says: “Like, wow, I’m travelling with a bunch of school shooting survivors, and these people are brandishing weapons. One day we were just like: ‘Screw it.’ We parked the bus, walked back there and started talking to them.” That led to long conversations and even agreements on some things, such as background checks. It is moments like these that give Frost the confidence that he can reach across the aisle and forge bonds that yield meaningful legislation. But when those respectful conversations can’t happen, Frost won’t hesitate to force the issue. If elected, he says he will push for a ban on assault weapons, dismantle the National Rifle Association (NRA) and other gun lobbies, and create a national gun-violence taskforce made up of young, Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC) representatives.Three months ago, Frost created a national stir when he confronted Florida governor DeSantis at an Orlando event after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 students and two teachers were killed. In a widely circulated video posted on his Twitter page, Frost can be seen haranguing DeSantis to do something about gun violence. “Nobody wants to hear from you,” DeSantis sniffs, as Frost is escorted away. “I’m not afraid to pull up,” Frost says. “I have been Maced. I’ve been to jail for talking about what I believe in. So the threshold for un-comfortability is higher than the average person’s.”Despite his obvious maturity, Frost is prepared to follow in the august tradition of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin and other young politicians who have been pilloried for acting their age. His youth is an obvious line of attack for his Republican opponent, Calvin Wimbish, a 72-year-old former Green Beret, who was carrying out intelligence operations in Iraq while Frost was still wearing GapKids clothes. But Frost isn’t about to straighten up for any opponent; if they go low, he’ll limbo lower. “You’re gonna see me at concerts,” he says. “You’re gonna see me drumming. You’re gonna see me dancing. I was just at a library, and somebody came up to me and said: ‘I saw you dancing on stage on election day and it made me really happy to see a politician dancing.’“We’ve been conditioned to think politicians should behave a certain way. That’s why I danced on that stage after my speech. I want to give people a little taste of me and demystify the whole thing for them. I am you, you are me; I’m a small piece of a bigger puzzle.”As an Afro-Cuban on the campaign trail, Frost runs the risk of being othered by potential voters in either group. But beneath his mixed heritage and adoption story is a lot of common ground. His adoptive mother came to the US as a child in the 1960s, via a Freedom Flight from Cuba, with his grandmother and aunt; between them, they had one suitcase and no money. His childhood is full of fond memories of sumptuous food and weekend trips to south Florida. Frost’s adoptive father, a white Kansan, was a full-time steel pan player who introduced him to John Coltrane and Earth, Wind & Fire, and gifted him a drum kit in the second grade. “Not to get too deep, but when he showed me the wonder of culture, art and music, it changed my life,” Frost says. “It opened me up to what it means to be vulnerable and what it means to allow art to make you vulnerable.”Frost did not anticipate his rising political profile would result in him running for office this soon. Even as Democratic operatives recruited Frost after Demings announced her intention to unseat Rubio, Frost was content working in the grassroots. But then last July, Frost reconnected with his biological mother. Among other things, she disclosed that she had been battling with drugs, crime and poverty when Frost was born. “What made the conversation even more powerful was that I never meant to have it,” he says. “Not because I hated her, but because I was living my life.” She explained that she had given up Frost for adoption not to give him a chance for a better life, but to spare him for something even greater. After their chat Frost was convinced: he was running for Congress.So far, the Frost campaign’s biggest gains have come the old-fashioned way, through a disciplined and methodical ground game. He has been especially deliberate about canvassing the University of Central Florida and its 70,000 students, many of them in-state local people. “We had Nights for Frost, with a group of young people knocking on doors,” he says. “We did ‘dorm storms’ multiple times. All too often people write off the youth vote because it hasn’t performed as much as other [groups]. But we also have to recognise that there are so many structural barriers that impact young people going to vote. We have a lot of work to do that spans beyond registering voters. It’s not just talking to people when they’re 18, but talking to people when they’re 16, 14 – creating lifelong advocates, not just waiting until they’re 18.” Frost doesn’t just understand where young people are coming from; he’s in the same boat. He lives with his girlfriend and his sister. When they were priced out of their apartment last October, he couch-surfed and slept in his car for a month before he found a new place. “I couldn’t go back home because my 97-year-old grandmother lives there, and this was in the middle of the Delta variant,” he says.Now in a new apartment, he is splitting $2,100 a month rent, which is still too high, he says. He has made up his mind to move out when the lease expires in November, potentially leaving him unhoused on election day. If he wins, he says he wouldn’t get paid until February at the earliest. Technically, he could take a stipend from his campaign fund now, but he would rather not give the Wimbish campaign or its allies any ammunition. To soften the potential blow to come, he hit the Uber trail hard and completed 60 rides one weekend. This is in between pulling 70-hour weeks on the campaign. So when he talks with urgency about the affordable housing crisis, it’s real. “There’s still a lot of barriers for working-class people to run for office,” he says. “I want to be the voice who shows how messed up it is and help demystify the process.”When it comes to considering his potential political legacy, though, to hear Frost tell it, if he does his job right, he won’t be in it for long. “I want to live in a world where you don’t have to care about politics,” he says, “where these political clubs just don’t exist. March for Our Lives doesn’t exist. MSNBC is irrelevant. TV is all about entertainment because the government is working for you. Yeah, that’s utopian, but it’s what we need to work toward.”TopicsUS politicsFloridaDemocratsfeaturesReuse this content More