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      Johnson pleads for decorum from Republicans at Biden State of the Union

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      Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the US House, reportedly pleaded with his party to show “decorum” on Thursday, when Joe Biden comes to the chamber to deliver his State of the Union address.“Decorum is the order of the day,” Johnson said, according to an unnamed Republican who attended a closed-door event on Capitol Hill on Wednesday and was quoted by the Hill.The same site said another unnamed member of Congress said Johnson asked his party to “carry ourselves with good decorum”.A third Republican was quoted as saying, “He said, ‘Let’s have the appropriate decorum. We don’t need to be shrill, you know, we got to avoid that. We need to base things upon policy, upon facts, upon reality of situations.”Last year’s State of the Union saw outbursts from Republicans and responses from Biden that made headlines, most awarding the president the win.Kevin McCarthy, then speaker, also asked his Republican members not to breach decorum. But in a sign of his limited authority, months before he became the first speaker ejected by his own party, such pleas fell on deaf ears.When Biden said Republicans wanted to cut social security and Medicare, many Republicans shouted: “No!”Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia – apparently dressed as a Chinese spy balloon – yelled: “You lie! You lie! Liar!”Responding to widespread applause, Biden said: “As we all apparently agree, social security and Medicare are apparently off the books now … We’ve got unanimity!”Greene has form. In March 2022, she and Lauren Boebert, a fellow extremist from Colorado, repeatedly interrupted Biden’s first State of the Union.The two congresswomen tried to start a chant of “Build the wall”, referring to the southern border. Boebert shouted about the deaths of 13 US service members in Afghanistan. She was booed in return.Biden will give his third State of the Union at a key point in an election year, his rematch with Donald Trump all but confirmed, polling showing Trump in the lead.The third Republican who spoke to the Hill said Republicans attending Biden’s speech should let Democrats “do the gaslighting, let them do the blaming. I think the American people know who is responsible for the many worldwide crises that we have.”But a named Republican, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, said decorum would most likely not be maintained.“Will they do it?” Burchett said, of likely boos and catcalls at Biden. “Somebody asked me that earlier and I said, ‘Does the Baptist church got a bus?’ Of course they will because he’s gonna say some very offensive things, he’s gonna attack us.“I think we just need to try to be a little classy. Consider where we’re at, let the other side do that. You know, they did it to Trump, and nobody said boo, but when we do it we’re gonna get made an example of it.”Democrats did boo Trump. The most memorable State of the Union moment from his presidency, though, came in 2020, another election year, and was expressed in actions rather than words.After Trump finished speaking, Nancy Pelosi, then speaker of the House, stood behind him and theatrically ripped up his speech. More

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      Smirking and smiling: why America’s judges have made Trump gleeful

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      You’re reading the Guardian US’s free Trump on Trial newsletter. To get the latest court developments delivered to your inbox, sign up here.On the docket: the courts are suddenly making Trump ‘jubilant’On Monday, Donald Trump did something he has rarely done in the past few months: he heaped praise on judges.“I want to start by thanking the supreme court for its unanimous decision today,” he said in remarks at his Mar-a-Lago home, shortly after the US supreme court ruled that he was wrongly removed from Colorado’s primary ballot, in a decision that guarantees he’ll be able to appear on every state’s ballots this fall.“It was a very important decision, very well crafted. I think it will go a long way toward bringing our country together, which our country needs.”In the past week, judges have given Trump a lot to smile about.The supreme court’s ruling that he can’t be removed from the ballot came just days after the same court decided to in effect delay his Washington DC federal election interference trial for months, possibly pushing it past election day and derailing the trial entirely. On Wednesday, the court announced that it would hear arguments for that case on 25 April – the absolute final day of the court’s calendar for oral arguments.Guardian US reporter Hugo Lowell writes that Trump “has been jubilant” over the supreme court’s move, and has repeatedly raised the topic “every day since” it happened, according to people close to him.On Friday, Trump smirked and smiled as he watched Judge Aileen Cannon, a judge in Florida he appointed to the federal bench who’s now overseeing his classified documents case, make clear she was in no rush to get that trial moving and was likely to delay its start date.Cannon told prosecutors that one part of their proposed schedule was “unrealistic”, a sign she wouldn’t accept their proposed July trial date. And she declined to actually schedule anything during last Friday’s scheduling hearing – an unusual approach that charitably indicates the rookie judge is moving very deliberately through the process, and could even suggest she’s aiming to slow the trial down as much as possible.Trump is known for wearing his emotions on his sleeve, and his demeanor couldn’t have been more different than at other recent court appearances. When he appeared at the late January hearing to set his New York hush-money trial dates, Trump called it a “sad day for New York” and complained the trial would take him off the campaign trail. During his civil defamation trial with E Jean Carroll in late January, Trump groused so loudly during testimony that the judge had to warn him to pipe down – or be removed from court.In Georgia, we’re still waiting to see what Judge Scott McAfee decides to do after last Friday’s hearing wrapped up debate over whether the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, and special prosecutor Nathan Wade should be removed from Trump’s Georgia criminal election interference case. Trump’s criminal hush-money case is set to kick off in New York in just a few weeks.But the events of the past 10 days have made it more likely that all but one of Trump’s criminal trials may not take place before the November election – if they happen at all.Will this matter?View image in fullscreenGuardian US chief reporter Ed Pilkington dissects the supreme court’s decision to leave Trump on the ballot in Colorado, warning that its 9-0 decision belied a deep division over what the liberal justices viewed as a “wholly gratuitous” expansive decision from five of the court’s conservative justices.Ed writes: “The sting of the ruling – and its danger, despite its unanimous facade – is likely to be felt in the longer term. As the three liberal justices lament, the ruling shields the court and ‘petitioner’ – ie Trump – ‘from future controversy’. Worse, the conservative majority has moved to ‘insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding federal office’ … protecting all future insurrectionists against the democratic safeguards built into the US constitution.“That future may not be long in coming. Trump has shown no remorse over 2020, and may well unleash another attack should he lose in November.”Our reporter George Chidi explains that Judge McAfee’s crucial decision on whether or not to disqualify Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade from the Georgia election interference case probably hinges on how McAfee views a specific part of the law: whether the defense had to prove Willis and Wade had an actual conflict of interest, or just the appearance of impropriety, for them to be booted from the case.“The stakes are high,” George writes. “If Willis is disqualified, it will plunge the prosecution against Trump, and others, into chaos, likely triggering delays that could go beyond the November election. If Willis remains, the prosecution of the former US president for seeking to undermine Georgia’s 2020 election will continue – though it will be badly damaged in terms of political optics.”And Sam Levine lays out how the supreme court’s decision to hear Trump’s claims of presidential immunity was “unquestionably one of Trump’s biggest legal victories to date” – and undercuts their own standing in the eyes of the public.“The court has now essentially sanctioned Trump’s delaying strategy,” Sam writes. “Regardless of what the supreme court rules on the immunity question, by delaying the trial, it has now directly linked itself to Trump’s fate in the 2024 election. It is a perilous move for a court that is already suffering a credibility crisis and is widely seen as a body that favors Republicans and conservatives.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBriefsView image in fullscreen Trump’s attorneys said they opposed a gag order that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has asked Judge Juan Merchan to put in place in Trump’s upcoming hush-money criminal trial. The limited gag order would bar Trump from attacking potential trial witnesses, jurors, and Bragg and Merchan’s staffs while excluding the prosecutor and the judge themselves from the order. The Georgia state senate committee that is investigating Willis held a Wednesday hearing with Ashleigh Merchant, the attorney for Trump Georgia co-defendant Mike Roman, where she reiterated the claims she’d made during her push to disqualify Willis from the case. Politico reports that in recent weeks Arizona prosecutors issued grand-jury subpoenas to multiple people linked to Trump’s 2020 campaign, a sign that Kris Mayes, Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, is nearing a decision on whether to charge Trump’s allies in the state with crimes relating to their attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss.Cronies & casualtiesView image in fullscreenPro-Trump attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Jim Troupis settled a civil lawsuit in Wisconsin on Monday by agreeing to turn over documents that revealed the key role they played in creating what became Trump’s “fake electors” scheme to try to overturn his 2020 election defeat.Those once-private text messages and emails show exactly how intimately Chesebro was involved in the efforts – from conceptualizing the plan itself to brainstorming media strategy to attending the 6 January rally, where he took a selfie near the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.In one text message, after the Wisconsin supreme court declined to overturn the state’s election results, Chesebro sent Troupis a screenshot of a text that appears to joke about killing Brian Hagedorn, a conservative justice who cast a critical vote in the case. “We’re thinking of inviting Hagedorn on the plane and solving that problem at high altitude, over water …” the message says.What’s nextFriday Georgia’s campaign-filing deadline is noon on Friday – meaning we’ll know by then whether anyone decides to run against Fani Willis (as well as Judge Scott McAfee, who’s overseeing the case and is running for election for the first time after being appointed to the bench by the Republican governor, Brian Kemp, in 2022).Some time next week McAfee said at last Friday’s hearing that he plans to make a decision by the end of next week on whether Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade will be allowed to remain on the Georgia case.Any time now Judge Cannon could announce the new trial schedule for the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.25 March Trump’s criminal hush-money trial is set to begin with jury selection in New York.25 April The US supreme court will hear oral arguments over Trump’s claims that presidential immunity protects him against any criminal charges for his actions in the lead-up to the January 6 insurrection.Have any questions about Trump’s trials? Please send them our way at: trumpontrial@theguardian.com More

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      Super Tuesday 2024 live: millions of voters head to polls in the US as Haley suggests she could stay in the race

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      Voters in more than a dozen states head to the polls on Tuesday for what is the biggest day of the presidential primaries of the 2024 election cycle.Polls are now open in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia for voters to cast their ballots in the Republican presidential primary on Tuesday. All those states except Alaska are also holding their Democratic primary contests as well. In Iowa, where Democratic caucuses were held by mail since January, the results are expected this evening. (Republicans held their Iowa caucuses in January, when Trump easily won the first voting state.)First polls will close at 7pm Eastern time. Here’s what to expect tonight, so you can plan your evening. Meanwhile, here’s a recap of the latest developments:
      Nikki Haley once again rejected a third-party presidential bid, as she insisted she would stay in the race “as long as we’re competitive”.
      “I don’t know why everybody is so adamant that they have to follow Trump’s lead to get me out of this race. You know, all of these people deserve to vote. Sixteen states want to have their voices heard,” she told Fox News.
      Joe Biden aimed to shore up his standing among Black voters as he warned what would happen if Democrats lose the White House.
      Biden is reportedly eager for a “much more aggressive approach” to the 2024 contest for the White House that would revolve going for Donald Trump’s jugular.”
      Donald Trumphas predicted he will sweep “every state” on Super Tuesday and said he is fully focused on the November election against his presumed opponent, Joe Biden.
      Trump voiced support for the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza, and claimed the Hamas attacks of 7 October on Israel would have never happened if he had been president at the time.
      Taylor Swift has urged her fans to vote on Super Tuesday in a post on her Instagram Story.
      Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming has decided not to run for Senate Republican leader to succeed Mitch McConnell, and instead will run for the No. 2 position of whip.
      Only in the past few years have Democrats known success in Arizona’s Senate races, and Republicans are hoping to undo that in November.In a statement, Montana senator and head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee Steve Daines said Kyrsten Sinema’s decision to bow out will boost the prospects of Kari Lake, who the party is backing for the seat.“An open seat in Arizona creates a unique opportunity for Republicans to build a lasting Senate majority this November. With recent polling showing Kyrsten Sinema pulling far more Republican voters than Democrat voters, her decision to retire improves Kari Lake’s opportunity to flip this seat,” Daines said.Turnout has lagged in Minnesota’s primary compared to previous years, at least so far. About 88,000 people had returned early ballots as of Tuesday morning, out of 200,000 who had received them, the state’s secretary of state, Steve Simon, told reporters.Nationally, many states have seen lower turnout this presidential primary season as Trump and Biden have dominated the nominating contests, leaving voters feeling like their vote won’t play much of a role at this point.“There are at least a couple of factors that explain turnout,” Simon said. “One is candidates that inspire strong feelings, and the other is perceptions of competitiveness. I think it’s safe to say, I don’t think I’m breaking any new ground here, that we have a lot of number one, and not so much of number two.”But the lower turnout in the presidential primaries doesn’t tell us anything about what could happen in November’s general election. Presidential general elections bring the highest turnout of any US elections.“Over the last many years, there has been virtually no connection, virtually none, between early in the year primary turnout and general election turnout,” Simon said.Nationally, many states have seen lower turnout this presidential primary season as Trump and Biden have dominated the nominating contests, leaving voters feeling like their vote won’t play much of a role at this point.“There are at least a couple of factors that explain turnout,” Simon said. “One is candidates that inspire strong feelings, and the other is perceptions of competitiveness. I think it’s safe to say, I don’t think I’m breaking any new ground here, that we have a lot of number one, and not so much of number two.”But the lower turnout in the presidential primaries doesn’t tell us anything about what could happen in November’s general election. Presidential general elections bring the highest turnout of any US elections.“Over the last many years, there has been virtually no connection, virtually none, between early in the year primary turnout and general election turnout,” Simon said.Hello US politics live blog readers, Super Tuesday is all go at the voting booths and the results will start coming in this evening. We’ll be here to bring you all the news and the context, as it happens.Here’s where things stand:
      Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and his wife, Nadine Menendez, have been charged with obstruction of justice in a new, 18-count indictment unsealed on Tuesday related to a years-long bribery scheme linked to Egypt and Qatar.
      Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, ex-Democratic Party and now independent US Senator, has announced she will retire at the end of her term this year. Her exit clears the way for a likely matchup between Republican Kari Lake and Democratic Ruben Gallego in one of the most closely watched 2024 Senate races.
      Nikki Haley, the last rival to Donald Trump for the Republican nomination, once again rejected a third-party presidential bid, as she insisted she would stay in the Republican race “as long as we’re competitive.” She told Fox News on Super Tuesday: “All of these people deserve to vote. Sixteen states want to have their voices heard.”
      Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming has decided not to run for Senate Republican leader to succeed Mitch McConnell, and instead will run for the No. 2 position of whip, according to multiple reports. Barrasso, 71, is relatively popular with the Republican right. He endorsed Donald Trump in January and has the closes relationship with the former president of the “three Johns”.
      Barasso’s decision not to run means the race is now effectively between senators John Thune of South Dakota and John Cornyn of Texas, although Barrasso’s departure could pave the way for another Trump ally to throw their hat in the ring, such as Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who met with Trump on Monday night amid speculation that he could launch a bid for Senate leader.
      Polls are open and voting is under way in some states as millions head to the ballot box on this Super Tuesday, the largest day for voting for both Democrats and Republicans before the November presidential election. Voters involved today are in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia. The territory of American Samoa will be caucusing.
      The Guardian US Super Tuesday live blogging team’s Léonie Chao-Fong is now handing over for the rest of the day and evening to Chris Stein and Maanvi Singh.Senator Bob Menendez and his wife, Nadine Menendez, have been charged with obstruction of justice in a new, 18-count indictment unsealed on Tuesday related to a years-long bribery scheme linked to Egypt and Qatar.Menendez has pleaded not guilty to earlier charges of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from businessmen to impede law enforcement probes they faced, and illegally acting as an agent of the Egyptian government.In the new indictment, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said Menendez’s former lawyers had told them in meetings last year that Menendez had not been aware of mortgage or car payments that two businessmen had made for his wife, and that he thought the payments were loans, Reuters reported.In countless campaign appearances during his futile pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination, Florida’s rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, celebrated his state as “the place woke goes to die”.Now, by virtue of a federal appeals court ruling that skewers a centerpiece of his anti-diversity and inclusion agenda, Florida resembles a place where anti-woke legislation goes to die.In a scathing ruling released late on Monday, a three-judge panel of the 11th circuit appeals court in Atlanta blasted DeSantis’s 2022 Stop Woke Act – which banned employers from providing mandatory workplace diversity training, or from teaching that any person is inherently racist or sexist – as “the greatest first amendment sin”.The judges upheld a lower court’s ruling that the law violated employers’ constitutional rights to freedom of speech and expression. They were also critical of DeSantis for “exceeding the bounds” of the US constitution by imposing political ideology through legislation.The panel said the state could not be selective by only banning discussion of particular concepts it found “offensive” while allowing others.Donald Trump is seeking a new trial in the defamation case brought by E Jean Carroll, claiming that the judge in the case improperly restricted his testimony.In January, Trump was ordered to pay $83.3m in damages to Carroll for defaming her in 2019 when he denied her allegation that he raped her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.Trump’s testimony lasted less than five minutes as the judge in this case, Lewis Kaplan, significantly limited what the ex-president could say in court.In a court filing on Tuesday, Trump’s defense attorneys Alina Habba and John Sauer argued “the Court’s restrictions on President Trump’s testimony were erroneous and prejudicial” because Trump was not allowed to explain “his own mental state” when he made the defamatory statements about Carroll. They continued:
      This Court’s erroneous decision to dramatically limit the scope of President Trump’s testimony almost certainly influenced the jury’s verdict, and thus a new trial is warranted.
      Senator Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent, has announced she will retire at the end of her term this year.“I love Arizona and I am so proud of what we’ve delivered,” she said in a video posted to social media.
      Because I choose civility, understanding, listening, working together to get stuff done, I will leave the Senate at the end of this year.
      The now independent senator won her seat in 2018 as a Democrat. She was the first non-Republican to win a Senate seat for Arizona since 1994. She’d go on in December 2022 to announce her leave from the Democratic party to become an independent.Her exit clears the way for a likely matchup between Republican Kari Lake and Democratic Ruben Gallego in one of the most closely watched 2024 Senate races.Joe Biden claimed he has been leading in recent public opinion polls not noticed by the media.The president was asked about his message for Democrats who are concerned about his poll numbers as he boarded Air Force One in Hagerstown, Maryland. Biden replied:
      The last five polls I’m winning. Five in a row, five. You guys only look at the New York Times.
      A spokesperson for the Biden campaign did not immediately provide a full list of polls referenced by Biden, the Washington Post reported.Biden was also asked about the chances of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, to which he said:
      It’s in the hands of Hamas right now. Israelis have been cooperating. There’s been a rational offer. We will know in a couple of days what’s gonna happen. We need a ceasefire.
      Although many Democrats have sharply criticized Joe Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza, several primary voters who cast ballots in Arlington, Virginia, said they felt the president has done as much as he can to bring about a ceasefire.“I think he’s been between a rock and hard place,” said John Schuster, 66. “I’m a supporter of the state of Israel, but not of the way Israel has prosecuted the war.”Looking ahead to the general election against Donald Trump, Schuster said:
      I see no reason whatsoever to vote against Biden on that issue [of the war in Gaza] because the alternatives will all be worse.
      Russell Krueger, 77, condemned Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the situation in Gaza, where more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes.On the question how Biden has navigated the war, Krueger said”:
      I would have liked a little bit more verbal outreach, but I suspect he’s done most of what he can do … I would have given up on Netanyahu a little before this.
      Asked about Kamala Harris’ recent call for an immediate temporary ceasefire in Gaza, Krueger took her comments as a sign that the administration is “definitely moving in the right direction”. He added:
      I think that they will probably come out much more forcefully at the State of the Union address this Thursday.
      One Virginia Democrat said he had planned to cast a primary ballot for “uncommitted” on Tuesday, but he ended up voting for Marianne Williamson because “uncommitted” did not appear on Virginia’s primary ballot.David Bacheler, 67, criticized Joe Biden as a “horrible” president, arguing that the nation’s welfare had been materially damaged since he took office.“This country needs to change. It’s going in a very bad direction,” Bacheler said after voting at Clarendon United Methodist Church in Arlington.
      Everything’s blown up. Look at all the mess we’ve got in the Middle East now. It wasn’t like that a few years ago.
      Bacheler said he believes the country was better off when Donald Trump was president, and he is currently leaning toward supporting him over Biden in the general election.“He knows how to handle the economy better,” Bacheler said.
      I’m still undecided, but I’m leaning toward Trump.
      Two self-identified Democrats said they cast primary ballots for Nikki Haley this afternoon at Clarendon United Methodist Church in Arlington, Virginia.Virginia holds open primaries, so voters do not necessarily have to participate in the primary of the party with which they are registered.Although both said they planned to vote for Joe Biden in the general election, they chose to participate in the Republican primary as a means of protesting Donald Trump‘s candidacy.“There’s no greater imperative in the world than stopping Donald Trump,” said John Schuster, 66.
      It’ll be the end of democracy and the world order if he becomes president.
      Schuster acknowledged he did not align with Haley on most policy matters, but he appreciates how her enduring presence in the Republican primary appears to have gotten under Trump’s skin.“It’s a vote against Trump. Nikki Haley is very conservative. I disagree with her on everything, except for on the issue of democracy and Russia,” Schuster said.
      Anything to irritate [Trump] and slow him down is what I’m doing.
      Voters in more than a dozen states head to the polls on Tuesday for what is the biggest day of the presidential primaries of the 2024 election cycle.Polls are now open in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia for voters to cast their ballots in the Republican presidential primary on Tuesday. All those states except Alaska are also holding their Democratic primary contests as well. In Iowa, where Democratic caucuses were held by mail since January, the results are expected this evening. (Republicans held their Iowa caucuses in January, when Trump easily won the first voting state.)First polls will close at 7pm Eastern time. Here’s what to expect tonight, so you can plan your evening. Meanwhile, here’s a recap of the latest developments:
      Nikki Haley once again rejected a third-party presidential bid, as she insisted she would stay in the race “as long as we’re competitive”.
      “I don’t know why everybody is so adamant that they have to follow Trump’s lead to get me out of this race. You know, all of these people deserve to vote. Sixteen states want to have their voices heard,” she told Fox News.
      Joe Biden aimed to shore up his standing among Black voters as he warned what would happen if Democrats lose the White House.
      Biden is reportedly eager for a “much more aggressive approach” to the 2024 contest for the White House that would revolve going for Donald Trump’s jugular.”
      Donald Trumphas predicted he will sweep “every state” on Super Tuesday and said he is fully focused on the November election against his presumed opponent, Joe Biden.
      Trump voiced support for the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza, and claimed the Hamas attacks of 7 October on Israel would have never happened if he had been president at the time.
      Taylor Swift has urged her fans to vote on Super Tuesday in a post on her Instagram Story.
      Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming has decided not to run for Senate Republican leader to succeed Mitch McConnell, and instead will run for the No. 2 position of whip.
      Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the former Trump press secretary turned Arkansas governor, has said she is confident that her former boss will win the GOP nomination and take back the White House in the November general election.Sanders, speaking to reporters as she cast her ballot at a Little Rock community center with her husband, Bryan Sanders, said:
      This is a head to head matchup at this point between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and he’s the clear favorite, has all the momentum, and I feel really good about him winning again in November.
      She went on to say that she was not surprised by the US supreme court’s ruling restoring Trump to primary ballots, adding that the 9-0 decision was “very telling” and “should be a signal to stop trying to use our courts for political purposes.”Reaching for racist rhetoric bizarre even for him, Donald Trump compared undocumented migrants to the US to Hannibal Lecter, the serial killer and cannibal famously played by Sir Anthony Hopkins in the Oscar-winning 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs.“They’re rough people, in many cases from jails, prisons, from mental institutions, insane asylums,” the former president and probable Republican presidential nominee claimed in an interview with Right Side Broadcasting Network on Monday.
      You know, insane asylums, that’s Silence of the Lambs stuff. Hannibal Lecter, anybody know Hannibal Lecter?
      To laughter from the audience at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump added:
      We don’t want ’em in this country.
      Trump has made such statements before, including in his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland last month. As framed to Right Side, they were the latest piece of extremist and dehumanizing invective from a candidate seeking to make immigration a core issue of the 2024 presidential campaign.Trump has a long history of such racist statements, having launched his successful 2016 presidential campaign by describing Mexicans crossing the southern border as rapists and drug dealers.Joe Biden took to the radio airwaves on Super Tuesday as he aims to shore up his standing among Black voters, a critical constituency for Democrats in the November general election.In an interview aired this morning, Biden promoted his achievements for Black voters, such as increased funding for historically Black colleges and universities and key investments in infrastructure to benefit Black communities, AP reported.The president also criticized Donald Trump and warned what would happen if the Democrats lose the White House in another interview.“Think of the alternative, folks. If we lose this election, you’re going to be back with Donald Trump,” said Biden.
      The way he talks about, the way he acted, the way he has dealt with the African-American community, I think, has been shameful.
      Donald Trump has claimed that the Hamas attacks of 7 October on Israel would have never happened if he had been president at the time.Trump, in an interview with Fox, was asked whether he supported the way the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is fighting in Gaza. Trump said:
      You’ve gotta finish the problem. You had a horrible invasion [that] took place. It would have never happened if I was president.
      Texas’s plans to arrest people who enter the US illegally and order them to leave the country is headed to the supreme court in a legal showdown over the federal government’s authority over immigration.An order issued on Monday by Justice Samuel Alito puts the new Texas law on hold for at least next week while the high court considers what opponents have called the most dramatic attempt by a state to police immigration since an Arizona law more than a decade ago.The law, known as Senate Bill 4, had been set to take effect on Saturday under a decision by the conservative-leaning fifth US circuit court of appeals. Alito’s order pushed that date back until 13 March and came just hours after the justice department asked the supreme court to intervene.The Republican governor, Greg Abbott, signed the law in December as part of a series of escalating measures on the border that have tested the boundaries of how far a state can go to keep people from entering the country.The law would allow state officers to arrest people suspected of entering the country illegally. People who are arrested could then agree to a Texas judge’s order to leave the country or face a misdemeanor charge for entering the US illegally. Those who do not leave after being ordered to do so could be arrested again and charged with a more serious felony.Donald Trump has predicted he will sweep “every state” on Super Tuesday and said he is fully focused on the November election against his presumed opponent, Joe Biden.“My focus is really at this point, it’s on Biden,” Trump said on Fox News.
      We should win almost every state today, I think every state. … But we [should’] really look at Biden. More

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      Hamas negotiators under pressure to produce list of hostages to be released

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      Egyptian and Qatari officials are putting pressure on Hamas negotiators in Cairo to produce a list of hostages to be released as the first step in a phased ceasefire agreement with Israel, according to officials familiar with the talks.Israel has not sent a delegation to the second day of talks in Cairo, demanding that Hamas present a list of 40 elderly, sick and female hostages who would be the first to be released as part of a truce that would initially last six weeks, beginning with the month of Ramadan, the officials say.Hamas is meanwhile demanding that large-scale humanitarian aid should be allowed into Gaza and that Palestinians displaced from their homes in the north of the coastal strip should be allowed to return.US officials have said that Israel had “more or less” accepted the six-week ceasefire deal, which White House national security spokesperson John Kirby confirmed would involve a six-week truce and begin with the release of sick, elderly and women hostages.Diplomatic sources in Washington said it was unclear what was stopping Hamas from producing a list identifying the first 40 hostages, noting that uncertainty about lists and identities had dogged the last successful hostage negotiations in November. They suggested it could reflect problems of communication between Hamas units inside and outside Gaza, that some hostages could be held by other groups including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or that elements of Hamas were withholding the information as a way of obstructing a deal.Washington does not believe the absence of an Israeli delegation was necessarily bad news for a ceasefire hopes, as Israeli negotiators could arrive within a couple of hours if agreement was reached on a list. Egypt and Qatar have assured Joe Biden’s administration that they were putting pressure on the Hamas representatives in Cairo to come up with the identities of the hostages involved.The US is also stepping up pressure on Israel to open new land routes, as well as new sea corridors, to allow a far greater flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza to prevent a famine that UN agencies have warned is imminent. The US vice-president, Kamala Harris, said on Sunday that Israel must “significantly increase the flow of aid”. She added there were “no excuses” for the delay.Biden used similar language in a tweet on Monday, saying: “The aid flowing into Gaza is nowhere near enough – and nowhere fast enough.” Unlike Harris, however, he did not name Israel as the responsible party.At the White House, Kirby said truck deliveries into Gaza had been slowed by opposition from some members of Israel’s cabinet.“Israel bears a responsibility here to do more,” Kirby said.View image in fullscreenIsrael meanwhile stepped up its allegations against the UN relief agency for Palestinians (Unrwa), saying that Unrwa in Gaza had employed over 450 “military operatives” from Hamas and other armed groups, and that Israel had shared this intelligence with the UN.“Over 450 Unrwa employees are military operatives in terror groups in Gaza,” Israeli military spokesperson R Adm Daniel Hagari said on Monday evening. “This is no mere coincidence. This is systematic.”“We sent the information that I am sharing now, as well as further intelligence, to our international partners, including the UN,” he said.A preliminary report by the UN office of internal oversight services (OIOS) into alleged Unrwa-Hamas links delivered to the secretary-general last week, said the investigators had received no evidence from Israel since the initial allegations in January that a dozen Unrwa employees had taken part in the 7 October Hamas attack. But the OIOS said it expected to receive information from Israel shortly.Pramila Patten, the UN special envoy on sexual violence in conflict reported on Monday that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe Hamas committed rape, “sexualised torture,” and other cruel and inhumane treatment of women during the 7 October attack. In her report, Patten, who visited Israel with a nine-person team in the first half of February, added there were also “reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing.” As the talks were under way in Cairo, a top Israeli minister, Benny Gantz, arrived in Washington for talks with Harris, the US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, to the undisguised irritation of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu invited his longstanding political rival into a coalition government after the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, but that has done little to improve the tense relations between the two men.US officials acknowledged that Gantz’s meetings in Washington, enhancing his own status as a would-be prime minister, was likely to inflame those tensions further. Netanyahu has yet to be invited to the White House since he returned to office at the end of 2022, at the head of the most rightwing coalition in Israeli history.Gantz is said to have asked for the visit to Washington, rather than having been invited, but US officials said they welcomed an opportunity to talk to a member of the five-man Israeli war cabinet.“We’re going to discuss a number of things in terms of the priorities that, certainly, we have, which includes getting a hostage deal done, getting aid in, and then getting that six-week ceasefire,” Harris told reporters before meeting Gantz.The Biden administration is pushing for more crossing points into Gaza to be opened for humanitarian relief, especially Erez in the north. US officials say that a sea route would take at least a week to arrange, if at all, so opening Erez and other access points to the north is seen by aid organisations as an urgent priority.“The disparity in conditions in the north and south [of Gaza] is clear evidence that aid restrictions in the north are costing lives,” warned Adele Khodr, the regional director of the UN children’s relief organisation, Unicef. Unicef says 16% of children in the north are acutely malnourished, compared with 5% in the south of the strip.The White House is seeking to help resolve rifts within the Israeli coalition, suggesting Netanyahu should seek a compromise over his coalition’s bitterly contested judicial overhaul, introduced early last year. After unprecedented street protests over the measures, in which demonstrators said they feared for Israel’s democratic future, the US president went even further, telling reporters in March 2023: “I hope he walks away from it.”Netanyahu has faced significant pressure to step down for nearly a decade over his ongoing trials for corruption charges, which he denies, as well as for instigating the judicial overhaul, which has been suspended since the outbreak of war.It is widely believed in Israel that Netanyahu is slow-walking ceasefire talks, as well as talking up threats of an Israeli offensive on Rafah and Lebanon, because he believes he stands a better chance of beating the charges if he remains in office, and elections are unlikely while Israel is still at war.Earlier this year, Israel’s centrist opposition leader, Yair Lapid, met the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in Berlin, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in Paris.Polling suggests Netanyahu’s coalition of far-right and religious parties would incur massive losses if an election was held now, and centrist and leftwing Israeli parties are looking for ways to force an early contest. Gantz’s party is currently likely to win the most votes.Lapid said in a post on X after last week’s local elections that the successful contests showed that holding national elections during the war would pose “no problem”. More

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      Donald Trump confuses Joe Biden and Barack Obama again at Virginia rally – video

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      Donald Trump confused Barack Obama for Joe Biden at a rally in Virginia, triggering further questions about the age of the likely Republican presidential nominee who has made a string of such gaffes. Trump said: ‘Putin has so little respect for Obama that he’s starting to throw around the nuclear word’. The crowd reportedly went silent as Trump referenced Obama, who left office more than seven years ago. It was the third time Trump had made the same blunder in the past six months More

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      Barbara Lee’s idealism inspires loyalty in her district. Can it carry her to the Senate?

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      Barbara Lee has never lost an election.That is quite a feat, given that she has built a career championing unpopular, even radical causes.Two decades ago, she was famously the only member of Congress to vote against giving the president broad, open-ended war powers following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. She received hate mail and death threats from all over the country in response. Before joining Congress, she was one of the only members of the state legislature to challenge California’s “three strikes” law, which escalated sentences for people with prior felonies. She got death threats then, too.Through it all, her congressional district in Oakland and Berkeley, which Lee calls “the wokest district in the country”, has remained loyal to her, repeatedly re-electing her with more than 80% of the vote. In more than two decades in the House, Lee, 77, has become the highest-ranking Black woman in the chamber. As her aspirations turn to the US Senate, however, she may be poised to lose an election for the first time.Lee’s campaign has consistently lagged behind those of two House Democratic colleagues – Katie Porter of Orange county, and Adam Schiff of Los Angeles. More recent polls have also found her trailing the Republican Steve Garvey, a former baseball star of the LA Dodgers. Schiff entered 2024 with $35m in campaign funds and Porter had $13m – Lee has lagged, with just $816,000 in the bank as of January. In the state’s no-partisan primary system, only the top two candidates will advance to the general election in November.As millions of Californians start filling out their primary ballots, Lee said she has given “no thought at all” to the possibility that she might lose.“I have a record of being on the right side of issues – and fighting for that,” she said. And that, she said, “resonates with the majority of Californians”.While Schiff and Porter both made a name for themselves during the Trump presidency – the former is famous for leading the first impeachment effort against Donald Trump, while the latter became nationally known for wielding a whiteboard against hapless conservative appointees – Lee has spent her decades in the House assiduously forwarding progressive policies.View image in fullscreen“She didn’t come on MSNBC every other day,” Ro Khanna, the Silicon Valley congressman who is co-chairing Lee’s campaign, told the Guardian soon after she launched her campaign last year. Lee doesn’t have the same name recognition, or the funds her opponents have, he said. “But she has a record of being an iconic progressive champion.”In an election where the leading Democratic candidates have nearly identical voting records, Lee’s political idealism could be what distinguishes her campaign, or what dooms it.Notably, she was the first to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. On 8 October – as Israel’s military prepared to lay siege to the Gaza Strip following the 7 October attack by Hamas – she called on the world to come together to “try to stop the escalation”.Porter initially declined to take the stance, before eventually coming out in favour of a “bilateral ceasefire”; Schiff still opposes one.“I don’t think you have to temper your message,” Lee said. “Because authenticity is extremely important for voters.”Her thought process now, she added, is very similar to what it was post-9/11, when she opposed the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that gave George W Bush sweeping anti-terrorism war powers, warning that military retaliation could spiral out of control.Back then, her views alienated her from members of her own party. Decades later, both Democrats and Republicans have expressed regret over the protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “She was right. I was wrong,” Bernie Sanders said at a debate during his presidential run in 2019. “So was everybody else in the House.”Often, her ideas on domestic policy have been equally audacious – and prescient. She was an early proponent of Medicare for all in 2003, a position that has since gained momentum among Democrats and progressives. Last month, she made headlines discussing a proposal to raise the minimum wage to $50 per hour – seven times the current federal minimum wage of $7.25. She defended the idea, citing a United Way report funding that a yearly income of $127,000 was, as she said, “just barely enough” for a family in the Bay Area. Her fellow Democrats have backed a more modest (but perhaps equally improbable in Congress) proposal to increase the minimum to $20 0r $25.“I don’t think candidates should moderate their positions, because authenticity is extremely important for voters,” she said. “I’ve been consistent over the years even if I have to stand alone.”As much as her ideals may have isolated her on Capitol Hill, they have been embraced in Oakland and Berkeley. After her 2001 stand against the AUMF, she was re-elected to her office with 81% of the vote.“Here in the Bay Area, we have deep anti-war roots, spanning back to the Vietnam era,” said Aimee Allison, president and founder of the advocacy group She the People. A former combat medic, Allison left the military with an honourable discharge as a conscientious objector, during the Gulf War. “Barbara Lee is coming out of that grand tradition.”View image in fullscreenLee was born in El Paso, Texas, and raised in southern California. But it was in Oakland the the Bay Area, in the birthplace of the Black Panthers and the centre of the peace movement, that she came of political age. “We’re the heart and soul of the peace and justice movement,” Lee said. “And a lot of my understanding and clarity on issues around national security and the defence budget come directly from the Bay Area.”Lee landed there after leaving an abusive relationship, two young children in tow, and was for a stint unhoused, floating between motels. “I understand the housing crisis in a way that probably a lot of senators don’t,” she said.Eventually, she enrolled as a student at Oakland’s Mills college, and began volunteering at the Black Panthers’ Community Learning Center. Back then, she didn’t believe in the national political system, which had repeatedly harmed and failed Black and minority Americans.” I was an activist. I was a revolutionary,” she said in an interview with the Kennedy presidential library. “I was not going to register to vote; there was no way I was going to get involved in politics.”Then Lee met Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to be elected to Congress – and in 1972, the first woman of colour to run for president. And she found a politician who spoke to her. Lee signed on to work for Chisholm’s presidential campaign, and then started working for the congressman Ron Dellums – the firebrand anti-war activist and anti-apartheid campaigner.In 1990, she ran for office herself. “She was asking about the seat through the 12 years I was in it,” said Elihu Harris, a former California representative who has been friends with Lee since college. “Like ‘move over, move over.’ It was a joke but she wanted to be in elected office.” When Harris stepped down as a representative to serve as Oakland mayor, Lee took his place. “It wasn’t even a close election,” Harris chuckled.View image in fullscreenShe was elected to the state senate, and then succeeded her mentor Dellums as a US congresswoman – serving 25 years. Now the activist and revolutionary who once refused to register to vote said she’s seeking a “larger megaphone” in the Senate.If elected, she would be the third Black woman to serve in the chamber. Only nine Black people have ever served in the Senate, and only two – Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois and now vice-president, Kamala Harris – were women. “I made the decision to run because I think my voice as an African American woman, and my perspective, is needed there,” Lee said. “We’re really at a crossroads. And Black women really understand these crossroads – and how to fight and how to lift up those voices that haven’t been heard.”Leftist and progressive groups have generally backed Lee over Porter, both of whom are members of the Congressional Progressive caucus, in large part due to her depth of experience.Lee, at 77, has brushed off concerns that she is too old to seek office. Indeed, even in an election cycle where the advanced years of the leading candidates for president – and their mental fitness to serve – has been at top of mind for voters, Lee’s experience has especially appealed to younger voters and progressives.“Even if she comes in third, or she comes in fourth, then I’m very happy to have voted for the only candidate who is actually working to stop a genocide,” said Jonah Gottlieb, a Democratic party delegate based in Berkeley. In early October, after Lee had called for a ceasefire, but before she had signed onto a ceasefire resolution put forth by other congressional progressives, Gottlieb joined more than two dozen Jewish constituents outside her Oakland office asking her to add her name to the bill.A few days later, her staff met with them as well as Palestinian activists. On 18 October, she signed on to the resolution.“I know that she has really good relationships with progressive organisations in California, and she will work really effectively with these grassroots movements, in a way that I haven’t seen from Katie Porter and certainly haven’t seen from Adam Schiff,” said Gottlieb.View image in fullscreenLee is also known to keep things copacetic in Congress – perhaps paradoxically, given tendency to take tough stands.“Everybody is okay with her,” said Julie Diaz Waters, a former intern and board member at Emerge California, a non-profit that recruits and trains Democratic women in politics. “Something I learned from her in terms of navigating relationships – is that you don’t try to make enemies in this game.” Lee has a habit of phoning her colleagues before a vote – to let them know that she won’t be supporting their legislation. “I call it stabbing in the front, not the back,” Waters said. “It’s a commitment to transparency. It’s a respectful way to operate.”Though Lee doesn’t hold the centrist fidelity for bipartisanship, she does have a record of working with Republicans. “She’s pragmatic and she understands the legislative process, the political process,” said Harris. “So Barbara is always someone who’s willing to seek and find common ground.”Less than two years after she dramatically rejected George W Bush’s request for legal authorization to use military force against the perpetrators of 9/11, Lee worked with him on the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) – the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease in the world.Bush has since made the multi-billion dollar program one of his defining legacies.Lee kept working to improve the program, including to eliminate provisions pushing ineffective abstinence-only education and restricting outreach to sex workers. In the Senate, Lee said, she remains dedicated to fighting for reproductive rights and freedoms, against a tide of restrictive policies across the US.“I’ve lived this, so I know,” said Lee, who has been open about her own back-alley abortion in Mexico. She was 16 at the time, and the Roe v Wade case establishing a right to abortions had yet to be ruled.“As someone who comes from a community that has been discriminated against – historically we had to fight for all of our freedoms,” she said. “This is in my DNA.” More

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      ‘He believes in power and chaos’: alarm as Steve Bannon plots to propel Trump

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      Wearing an olive green jacket over a black shirt, Steve Bannon blew the doors off a subject that most other speakers had tiptoed around. “Media, I want you to suck on this, I want the White House to suck on this: you lost in 2020!” he roared. “Donald Trump is the legitimate president of the United States!”A thrill of transgression swept through the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the National Harbor in Maryland. “Trump won!” Bannon barked, pointing a finger. “Trump won!” he repeated, shaking a fist. “Trump won!” he proclaimed again. His audience, as if hypnotised, chanted the brazen lie in unison.It was a blunt reminder that Bannon, an architect of Trumpism variously compared to Thomas Cromwell, Rasputin and Joseph Goebbels, remains a potent force in American politics as the 2024 US presidential election looms into view and the re-election of Trump looks a clear possibility.The former White House chief strategist may not be in daily contact with Trump any more but it scarcely matters: he is a vital source for the far-right ecosystem that shapes and animates the “Make America great again” (Maga) base.Bannon, 70, is currently appealing a criminal conviction and four-month prison sentence for defying a subpoena from the congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. The committee heard evidence that Trump spoke to Bannon at least twice on January 5 and predicted that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow”.In the meantime, he hosts a regular podcast called War Room, which propagates false narratives about the 2020 election and coronavirus vaccines but is given a veneer of respectability by guests including Elise Stefanik, the No 3 Republican in the House of Representatives, and other senior politicians.A pop-up War Room studio commanded a prime location at CPAC last week and featured guests such as Liz Truss, the former British prime minister. On the main stage, Bannon compared Trump to the Roman general Cincinnatus and declared: “His fate and destiny is to have the greatest political comeback in American history from November 5 to drive the vermin out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.“Biden, you and your crime family are nothing but trash, OK? And on 20 January of 2025 we’re going to take out the trash.”The Maga-regalia wearing crowd went wild, cementing Bannon’s status as a tribune of the movement heading into the 2024 presidential election.Charlie Sykes, a political commentator and author of How the Right Lost Its Mind, said: “At the moment Steve Bannon is the id of the American right and, if we’ve learned anything in the last eight years, it’s don’t assume because somebody sounds extreme and unhinged that they will not be influential in this party.”Sykes makes an analogy with drug dealers competing with each other by selling purer and stronger forms of methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant. “Steve Bannon is still peddling the most powerful meth out there.“Donald Trump does not look at Steve Bannon and think this guy is unhinged; he’s looking at Steve Bannon and saying this is exactly what I want to hear from my supporters. Steve Bannon knows what he’s doing and he will act as a gravitational pull on the rest of the right because they have to match him.”Unkempt and unpolished, Bannon is the opposite of a career politician. He is a former naval officer, Goldman Sachs investment banker and film producer. He was executive chairman of Breitbart News, which he once described as “the platform of the ‘alt-right’”, a movement that has embraced racism and antisemitism, and became chairman of Trump’s 2016 winning election campaign.His tenure at the White House was short and acrimonious as he clashed with the president’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband Jared Kushner, who later described him as a “toxic” presence who accused him of “undermining the president’s agenda”. Trump himself may have been piqued by how much media attention Bannon was receiving and eventually branded him “Sloppy Steve”.But his ideas have proved harder to kill. Bannon continues to advocate the “deconstruction of the administrative state”, a radical downsizing of federal government bureaucracy, and an isolationist “America first” policy that he insists would keep the country out of a third world war. Such notions are percolating through to Republicans in Congress who oppose further military aid to Ukraine.Bannon also helps set the narrative on Trump’s signature issue, border security, blaming undocumented immigrants for crime, even thought studies have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than other US residents, and advocating mass deportations as a solution.Bannon argues that biggest losers from the record influx of immigrants is the Black and Latino working class. “Every Black person, every Hispanic person in our country, vote for Trump,” Bannon said at CPAC last Saturday. “Trump will set you free because right now they’re enslaving you.”He then assured his overwhelmingly white audience: “They call you racist, they call you xenophobic, they call you nativist. Nothing could be further from the truth because they can’t win the intellectual argument. What they have to do is try to smear you and you don’t care because you know that’s not true.”Bannon has a sign on his mantelpiece that says, “There are no conspiracies but there are no coincidences” – placing him in a twilight zone between conspiracy theories and otherwise. War Room is his biggest mouthpiece. Last year a study by the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington found that almost 20% of its episodes contained a false, misleading or unsubstantiated statement, making it a bigger disinformation spreader than any other political podcast.Valerie Wirtschafter, a Brookings fellow who led the research, said War Room had been one of the most prominent platforms for election denialism even after networks such as Fox News pulled back. “The way he approaches things that are more conspiratorial in nature… he’s quite effective at considering the questions in a way that makes the audience think it’s not immediately evident that he’s confirming them. There’s this idea that he seems to be hearing all sides of the conversation.”As America braces for another divisive and volatile election, longtime Trump critics warn that Bannon still casts a long shadow. Rick Wilson, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, said: “Steve Bannon is a if not the primary spiritual and intellectual force of this nationalist movement that is in control of the Republican party.“He is a very powerful figure in today’s GOP [Grand Old Party] and it is inescapable in some ways that he will play a central role in whatever Trump administration emerges if Trump wins. He is the architect. As an avowed Leninist, he is a guy who is trying to engineer the revolution in his image.”Asked what a Bannon return to the White House would mean, Wilson replied: “Concentration camps. This guy keeps saying out loud they’re the enemies of the people, our opponents are deserve what they get, this hyperbolic rhetoric. He believes in power and chaos and will do whatever he can if he gets it. Whatever he could get away with in that circumstance, he will get away with it.”Bannon has spent years courting far-right nationalist movements around the world and the results were on vivid display at CPAC. Nigel Farage, a former leader of the Brexit party in Britain, observed that a decade ago he was the sole foreign-born speaker at the conference but now it has become a hub for populists from countries including Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Hungary and Spain.Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “To his credit, and to America’s detriment, he was one of the first people to look outside of the American political system to find like minded public high-profile figures in foreign counties like Nigel Farage to play an outsized role in being messengers.”Truss, who was removed as prime minister after just 50 days, found common cause with Bannon in blaming a “deep state” supposedly dominated by the left. Bardella, a former Breitbart News spokesperson and Republican congressional aide, added: “For people like Farage and Liz Truss, Bannon extends to them a second lease on life. They’ve peaked in terms of their public service career; there’s nothing left for them to be able to realistically attain.“Here comes Bannon with this direct line to one of the two most powerful forces in American politics in Donald Trump: we will elevate you, you will have status, you will have the perception of influence, you again will be an influencer. These people are desperate for relevancy Bannon is giving them that combination of relevancy and legitimacy and access to power.” More

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      Aaron Bushnell was my friend. May he never be forgotten | Levi Pierpont

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      On Monday 26 February, at 3.43pm, I got a text from a friend.“Have you seen the news out of DC today about the air force member? Let me know if you need to talk tonight or later this week.” I replied and explained that I had seen the headlines, and that it saddened me. She texted: “Since he was based in San Antonio I wondered if he was someone you crossed paths with or had friends in common with.”I said: “Hmm. I’ll have to find his name.”The next moment, there was a text.“The name I’ve seen is Aaron Bushnell.”I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I walked out the front door, and looked up at the sky. I called my friend. I said: “That’s my friend. I went to basic with him. I saw him last month.” And I wept. I found my last text conversation with him; he had sent me a YouTube video he thought was funny and we had chatted back and forth about it.That was early February, and I never heard from him again. I googled his name, and only believed it was really him when I saw his face on the news. I found the post he had made talking about why he was going to do what he did.I am still in shock. Every time I see a headline, I remember it all over again. Every time I see his name written on a poster at a protest, or I meet someone who knows his name, it doesn’t feel real to me. There’s so much on my mind right now, but here’s what I know, at this moment.Aaron did not die in vain. He has already inspired so many to stand up for truth and justice. It breaks my heart that his life ended this way. I could never do what he did, and I don’t believe anyone should do what he did. But we’ll never get Aaron back. All we can do is hear the message he died to shine a spotlight on: the horrors of the genocide in Gaza, and the complicity we share as military members and taxpayers of a government deeply invested in violence.Aaron is by no means the only United States military member who has felt complicit in the military’s violence, powerless to change anything, and stuck waiting until the end of a four- or six-year contract. There are thousands of military members similarly distraught, having thoughts of taking extreme actions to escape something that feels inescapable.I got out of the air force as a conscientious objector in 2023, after going through the exhaustive process for over a year. I applied to be separated because I came to realize I did not support what the military was doing, I didn’t support its goals, and I didn’t want to earn my livelihood from something I believed was wrong.During the process, I had so many conversations with fellow military members, a great many of whom could relate to the way I felt. One member spoke frankly with me, admitting that she had serious concerns with supporting the military. However, faced with the high costs of medical care outside the military, she commented: “If I have to sell my soul to the devil to get my children healthcare, that’s what I have to do.” Others were considering taking their lives as the only way to escape, and had no hope that they could make it to the end of their contract.If you’re a civilian living in the United States, please, have compassion for military members. Understand that many of us joined before we knew all the evil committed by the military. Do what you can to support organizations helping military members separate as conscientious objectors before the end of their contracts, such as the Center on Conscience & War.If someone in your life is considering joining the military, work with them to find other ways to fulfill the needs and desires that are drawing them to it, whether that’s looking for affordable ways to attend college, or more ethical ways to become a part of something larger than oneself, that actually benefits the world.If you’re a service member, I want you to know that you have options. You do not have to be complicit in genocide. You can stand up for what you believe in. If you’re having thoughts of killing yourself, reach out to your chaplains or an anonymous hotline for help. You matter. I need you to stay alive.Please, don’t forget Aaron. Let his death inspire you to live, with your whole being committed to the cause of justice for oppressed people. If you are a praying person, please pray for Aaron’s family. Rest in peace, Aaron.
      Levi Pierpont is a conscientious objector More