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A final Senate vote on passage of the spending plan is expected in the coming days. It narrowly cleared the House of Representatives last month.

Tillis has held public office in North Carolina since 2007 and has been a senator since 2015.

In his statement on Sunday, he said he was proud of his career in public service, and especially of what he called "bipartisan victories".

"Sometimes those bipartisan initiatives got me in trouble with my own party, but I wouldn't have changed a single one," he wrote.

He added that in recent years lawmakers who are "willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking" have become a rare sight in Washington.

"Too many elected officials are motivated by pure raw politics who really don't give a damn about the people they promised to represent on the campaign trail," Tillis wrote.

On Sunday, Trump called Tillis "a talker and complainer".

He was one of two Republican senators who voted against advancing Trump's spending and tax cuts bill on Saturday.

Tillis said the legislation's cuts to Medicaid, a healthcare programme that is used by millions of elderly, disabled and low-income Americans, would be "devastating" to people in North Carolina.

The bill proposes a work requirement on most adults in order to qualify for benefits.

It also reduces the amount of taxes states can charge medical providers, the funds from which are used heavily to finance Medicaid.

"I did my homework on behalf of North Carolinians, and I cannot support this bill in its current form," Tillis said on Saturday. "It would result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina."

Republicans who support the bill have dismissed Tillis' criticism, saying the proposed changes to Medicaid will eliminate fraud and waste and ensure the programme is viable in the long run.

The Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan federal agency, estimated late on Saturday that the changes would result in nearly 12 million Americans losing their health coverage.

Trump has also threatened to back another candidate in the Republican primary ahead of next year's midterm elections, saying he would be meeting with "numerous" contenders to challenge Tillis.

Speculation is already rife that Lara Trump, the president's daughter-in-law and a North Carolina native, might run for the seat, though she has not commented.

Trump has issued similar threats to other lawmakers who have not supported his marquee bill.

US news outlet Politico reported on Sunday, citing anonymous sources, that the White House was looking for challengers to Thomas Massie.

Trump dubbed Massie a "loser" in a post on the Truth Social platform last week.

"He votes, 'NO!' on everything, because he thinks it makes him cool," the president wrote.

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Thom Tillis: North Carolina Republican senator to leave Congress after clash with Trump

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Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina has refused to back the "Big Beautiful Bill", saying it will be "devastating" to people in his state.

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Lower courts have blocked the president's cuts to foreign assistance, diversity programmes and other government agencies, limited his ability to terminate government employees, put other immigration reforms on hold and suspended White House issued changes to election processes.

With the Supreme Court's decision in this case, the administration is in a much stronger position to ask courts to allow it to push forward on many of these efforts.

During the Biden presidency, conservative judges prevented Democrats from enacting new environmental regulations, offering student loan forgiveness, modifying immigration rules. Courts blocked changes to normalised immigration status for some undocumented migrants during Barack Obama's presidency, as well, and prevented him from making more white collar employees eligible for overtime pay.

In all these types of cases, courts will ultimately be able to step in and halt presidential actions that they deem illegal or unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court in its opinion said, " The lower courts shall move expeditiously to ensure that, with respect to each plaintiff, the injunctions comport with this rule and otherwise comply with principles of equity."

But that will come further along in the judicial process, at the appellate and Supreme Court level. In the meantime, presidents - Donald Trump and his successors, whether they are Republicans or Democrats - will have more time and space to act.

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Supreme Court decision on birthright citizenship broadens Trump's power

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The US's top court limited the ability of judges to issue nationwide injunctions, making it easier for Trump to carry out his agenda through executive orders.

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Ana FaguyBBC NewsBrandon DrenonBBC NewsReporting fromCapitol Hill

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US Senate holds marathon vote on Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’

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Senators are debating a nearly 1,000-page bill that is pivotal to President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda.

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Democratic Party primaries

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Mamdani’s surprise win in New York spurs battle for soul ...

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The social-media savvy Zohran Mamdani trounced the former governor Andrew Cuomo in a mayoral primary but the party’s establishment fears a shift to the…

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Democratic Party primaries

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Mamdani’s surprise win in New York spurs battle for soul ...

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The social-media savvy Zohran Mamdani trounced the former governor Andrew Cuomo in a mayoral primary but the party’s establishment fears a shift to the…

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New York mayor race goes to the wire as Democrats face a ...

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Zohran Mamdami, a 33-year-old socialist, is taking on billionaire-backed ex-governor Andrew Cuomo and could upset the Big Apple cart in Tuesday’s primary

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Trump and Trans rights

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Trans women transferred to men’s prisons despite rulings against Trump’s order

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Incarcerated trans women report being groped by male guards and suicidal thoughts: ‘I’m punished for existing’

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Presidential power to pardon

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Joe Biden commutes sentences of nearly 2,500 non-violent drug offenders

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Total number of pardons and commutations issued by US president is now higher than any of his predecessors

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Cabinet in USA

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Trump’s cabinet picks aren’t just ‘loyalists’. They’re groveling, subservient yes-men | Robert Reich

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All of Trump’s nominees are unprincipled enablers who are unlikely to push back when he makes reckless decisions

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Trump won ...but not big.

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Just how big was Donald Trump’s election victory?

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The US president-elect has emphasised the scale of his win – but data shows that most voters picked someone else.

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Gaetz withdraws. He worked out that he lacked support in the Senate.

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Matt Gaetz withdraws from consideration to be Trump’s attorney general

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Gaetz’s withdrawal comes amid intense scrutiny of allegations of sexual misconduct against the cabinet nominee

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Trump earlier picked Mehmet Oz to run the powerful agency that oversees the healthcare of millions of Americans.

Oz, who was selected to lead the CMS, trained as a surgeon before finding fame on The Oprah Winfrey Show in the early 2000s.

Oz has been criticised by experts for promoting what they called bad health advice about weight loss drugs and "miracle" cures, and suggesting malaria drugs as a cure for Covid-19 in the early days of the pandemic.

"There may be no physician more qualified and capable than Dr Oz to make America healthy again," Trump said in a statement.

The Trump transition team said in a statement that Oz "will work closely with [health secretary nominee] Robert F Kennedy Jr to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake".

Like McMahon, Oz will need to be confirmed by the Senate next year before he officially takes charge of the agency.

The CMS oversees the country's largest healthcare programs, providing coverage to more than 150 million Americans. The agency regulates health insurance and sets policy that guides the prices that doctors, hospitals and drug companies are paid for medical services.

In 2023, the US government spent more than $1.4tn (£1.1tn) on Medicaid and Medicare combined, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Trump said in a statement that Oz would "cut waste and fraud within our country's most expensive government agency". The Republican Party platform pledged to increase transparency, choice and competition and expand access to healthcare and prescription drugs.

Oz, 64, trained as a cardiothoracic surgeon - specialising in operations on the heart and lungs - and worked at New York City's Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University.

After he appeared in dozens of Oprah segments, he started The Dr Oz Show, where he doled out health advice to viewers.

But the line between promotion and science on the show was not always clear, and Oz has recommended homeopathy, alternative medicine and other treatments that critics have called "pseudoscience".

He was criticised during Senate hearings in 2014 for endorsing unproven pills that he said would "literally flush fat from your system" and "push fat from your belly".

During those hearings Oz said he never sold any specific dietary supplements on his show. But he has publicly endorsed products off air and his financial ties to health care companies were revealed in fillings made during his 2022 run for the US Senate in Pennsylvania.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Oz promoted the anti-malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, which experts say are ineffective against the virus.

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Trump picks Linda McMahon and Mehmet Oz to serve in top roles

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Linda McMahon is the US president-elect's choice for education secretary, and Mehmet Oz is lined up for a healthcare job.

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Matt Gaetz resigns from Congress after Trump attorney general nomination

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Decision by congressman, selected by Trump to lead DoJ, means end to ethics inquiry over alleged sexual misconduct

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Presidential powers - executive orders

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Trump planning flurry of executive orders for first day, top aide says

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Incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles reportedly says Trump will reinstate signature policies of first presidency

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Electoral College explained

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How can the candidate with most votes lose? The US electoral college explained

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Every four years, electoral college members meet in all 50 states and cast their votes – here’s what to know

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Voting by sex influence

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I hesitate to give JD Vance any ideas, but if American women were denied the vote, Donald Trump would be restored to the White House in a landslide. Similarly, if men were removed from the franchise, Kamala Harris would be swept into the Oval Office in an even bigger earthquake. As it is, the two are clashing in an election marked by a gulf so wide, the phrase "gender gap" doesn't do it justice. In ways that go deeper than mere politics, and with implications for the world beyond the US, the presidential election is increasingly looking like a war between men and women.

The numbers are stunning. An NBC poll this week found men favour Trump over Harris by 12 points, 52% to 40%. Among women, Harris leads Trump by 21 points: 58% to 37%. Put the two together and you have a gender chasm of 33 points. Men may not be from Mars and women may not be from Venus, but when it comes to choosing a US president, they are on different planets.

What explains it? The most obvious answer is that Trump's record, including a court ruling that he had committed rape and his own admission of serial sexual assault, boasting that he grabbed women " by the pussy", makes him repellent to tens of millions of women, none of that reduced by appointing a sidekick who speaks of " childless cat ladies". Similar explanatory power attaches to the 2022 decision by the supreme court, in the Dobbs case, to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion. Since then, it's been up to the 50 states whether to grant or withhold that right from women, and 22 of them have chosen to deny it. That shift is on Trump, who nominated three of the six supreme court judges who made the Dobbs decision, an achievement of which he has said he is " proud ".

But while the move delighted Trump's evangelical Christian supporters, it has cost him dear. Dobbs did not just anger American women, it mobilised them. In the midterm elections of 2022, as high inflation fuelled disaffection with Joe Biden, Republicans assumed they would ride a "red wave" to victory. That wave never came, in part because women, furious at the court's ruling and Republicans' part in it, turned out in big numbers to vote against them. And while Biden has never been fully comfortable speaking about abortion, Dobbs is widely regarded as the moment Harris found her voice as a national figure.

Still, the long-running battle over abortion rights only explains one side of the gender divide. Less obvious is that, as much as women are pulling away from Trump, large numbers of men, especially young men, are drawn towards him.

Here, the numbers are even more striking. Attitude surveys show that women between the ages of 18 and 29 are the most progressive group in US history. Meanwhile, a majority of men the same age back Donald Trump. A poll of six battleground states last month found among gen Z voters a gender gulf of 51 points.

Part of it is explained by Trump's trade in swaggering machismo, offering a kind of cartoonish manliness. In recent months that part of his act has only got louder. His supporters always wore T-shirts showing Trump's face superimposed on a ripped, Rambo-style body, but now they have the image of his bloodied face, fist pumped in the air, seconds after the assassination attempt on him in July, as he urged his followers to " Fight, fight, fight! "

There is nothing subtle about this. At his party convention in Milwaukee he was introduced by wrestler Hulk Hogan and the man behind the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Bear in mind that one study of young people around the world found that while young women were most concerned about issues such as "sexual harassment, domestic violence, child abuse and mental health", young men were more focused on " competition, bravery, and honour ".

In his own crude way, Trump speaks to that. I saw it for myself earlier this year in New Hampshire, where I encountered young male voters proudly declaring they were voting for "Donald J Trump", all but saluting as they pronounced that middle initial.

The performative masculinity includes a strong element of defiance. Trump's disregard for the norms and etiquette that govern most politicians shows a contempt for strictures that are seen as constraining men in particular. When he breaks the rules, it's often men who cheer because they feel those rules shackle them too - and they're sick of being told off. As one 20-year-old Trump voter complained to the New York Times, US society no longer " lets boys be boys ". As he put it: "Men my age, from a very young age we were told, 'You're not supposed to do this, you're not supposed to do that, you're just supposed to sit here and be quiet.'" Trump is anything but quiet.

Running alongside all this is the strong conviction that increased diversity and advances for women pose a threat to men. A third of men who back Trump believe that gains for women have come at men's expense, a figure that rises to 40% among men under-50 who support the former president. This resentment surfaces in the casual misogyny that is a Trump tic, and which informs the " manosphere " that he is doing so much to cultivate: the realm of podcasters and social media influencers that delights in a blend of old school sexism and mocking humour that fits Trump perfectly.

Toxic as those voices might be, they succeed because the resentment they feed on is real. If plenty of young American men feel they're getting left behind, that's because on multiple key measures they are. As the scholar Richard Reeves has set out, American boys are trailing behind girls whether in readiness to start elementary school or graduation from university. Men have lost their place as the default family breadwinner, and watched as many of the jobs they once regarded as their own, including manual work requiring no degree, have vanished. When it comes to finding a partner, or even just having friends, men lag behind.

These are trends affecting all men, which might help explain why Trump has made unexpected inroads not only with non-graduate white men, but also with men of colour, especially the young in both groups. They feel beleaguered - and see in Trump someone who sees them.

Now, there's a good chance that the gender chasm will ultimately help Harris. Women tend to vote in greater numbers than men, and they're with her. But polls have a habit of underestimating Trump and there could be an army of young men, out of pollsters' reach, who feel that a woman in the Oval Office would be one feminist advance too many. The Taylor Swift endorsement is welcome, but the Harris campaign could do with a thumbs-up from someone with serious influence over young men. It doesn't help that the "who we serve" page of the Democrats' own website features a long list of groups, including women, but makes no equivalent offer to men.

I don't expect any of this came up when Keir Starmer met Trump this week, but there is a warning here that should sound far beyond America's shores. As one US thinktank puts it: "History is littered with examples of nations suffering from the consequences of young men finding themselves idle without purpose." The gender gap is becoming dangerously wide. It must not become an abyss.

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It's not just Trump v Harris: America's men and women are also locked in battle now | Jonathan Freedland

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There are clear reasons why women are running from Trump, but men are flocking to him - and it's vital to understand why, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland

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Missouri executes Marcellus Williams despite prosecutors’ push to overturn conviction

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Williams long maintained his innocence and the killing was opposed by victim’s family, jurors and office that tried him

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Executions in S Carolina

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South Carolina to execute man despite bombshell admission from key witness

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Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah, 46, appeals for clemency from governor as co-defendant says he lied at trial

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Iconic US Presidential Debate Moments Through the Years: Gaffes, Wit, Drama

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US presidential debates have provided some of the most memorable moments in American politics. From Richard Nixon’s shaky first televised appearance to Ronald Reagan’s age-defying humor and Joe Biden’s recent struggles, these debates highlight candidates’ gaffes, wit, and drama, influencing public perception and sometimes even the election outcome. - TheDailyGuardian

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Key states finely balanced

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Trump campaign pulls away from three target states after Harris surge

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Ex-president diverts resources from states he boasted about winning while Biden was Democratic candidate

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Does the US constitution favour minorities?

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It wasn't so much what Joe Biden said, it was how he said it. His voice was weak and shaky, he lost his way, forgot what he was saying. He sounded feeble. He sounded old. Very old. And the storm of white-hot criticism that rained down on his head from friends and foes alike after the 2024 election's embarrassing and disastrous first presidential TV debate with Donald Trump was blistering. It was sad and painful to watch.

Republicans were jubilant. They think it's all over bar the voting. They claimed Biden had only one objective: to prove, at 81, that he was fit to lead as president for a second term - and he failed. Many Americans will agree. Except they already thought he was too old. It's unclear as yet how much this flop will sway undecided voters. Proud, stubborn Biden will fiercely resist pressure to stand down. And no leading Democrat is publicly willing as yet to wield the knife. That may change.

It's undoubtedly a moment of acute electoral crisis for America. Yet the world should pause and take a deep breath before burying Biden and the Democrats' re-election hopes. Almost lost in the noise was the hideously repulsive performance of Trump himself. He looked more like a predator than a president, less candidate, more loathsome, reptilian bully. He lied persistently and without a blush. For him, all policy is prejudice. The debate was a timely reminder of how dangerous this man is.

Trump's jabs and punches were mostly fact-free make-believe. He claimed Biden was corrupt and paid by China: no evidence. He said waves of illegal migrants were "coming over and killing our citizens" at unprecedented levels: absurd hyperbole. Most ridiculous was his claim that Biden "encouraged" Russia to invade Ukraine. Trump admires Vladimir Putin. He'd love to be a dictator like him.

Trump's jabs and punches were mostly fact-free make-believe

This debate proved two things. One is that Biden is struggling, perhaps fatally. He should have had the sense and selflessness to step down voluntarily before he reached this sorry pass. The other is that Trump, wholly lacking in principle and propriety, is a hate-spewing ethical vacuum who will stop at nothing to get elected - and, if allowed back into the Oval Office, will launch a reign of revenge.

This debate showed it's time to get serious again about Trump. His lies, crimes, anti-democratic views, misogyny and racist xenophobia have grown familiar over time. His 2020 defeat eventually brought relief and a certain complacency. But as the polls show, he's back. In truth, he never went away. If November's election were held today, he would probably win.

For real-time as opposed to prime-time insight into the Trump menace, consider the testimony of John Kelly, his longest-serving White House chief of staff - a man who watched him up close daily. Kelly describes his ex-boss as "not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women". Trump, Kelly said, "has no idea what America stands for... [He] admires autocrats and murderous dictators [and] has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our constitution and the rule of law".

Or consider Trump's plans for America and the world. They include deportations of millions of undocumented migrants, a sweeping, global trade war-triggering 10% tax on imports, unlimited oil drilling, the abandonment of Ukraine to Russia and the evisceration of Nato. Trump, 78, wants the supreme court, packed with his appointees, to agree that, as president, he can do anything he likes. He has again refused to say he would accept defeat.

The debate not only highlighted Trump's unchanged, unhinged behaviour, it also underscored fundamental constitutional problems that have enabled this lowlife to move within touching distance of the world's most powerful job once more. This crisis is not just about Trump. It's about how America works - or doesn't.

The founding fathers, writing laws 235 years ago for an inward-looking agrarian society of fewer than four million people, 700,000 of them enslaved people, could not envisage a freak like Trump. Their big concern was preventing the "tyranny of the majority" - by which they meant the power of the many (including non-whites) to dictate to the few. Yet today's problem is the opposite.

Thanks to the anachronistic electoral college, unbalanced bodies such as the Senate (where each of the 50 states has two representatives regardless of population size) and lifetime appointments of federal judges and supreme court justices, political minorities wield disproportionate power. Like George W Bush in 2000, Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 but won the presidency. He could soon do so again.

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In a new book, Tyranny of the Minority, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that repeated failures to reform antiquated institutions that facilitate and encourage the advance of ever more extremist minorities have left the country vulnerable to exactly the kind of crisis now enveloping it.

Like Trump, the 147 congressional Republicans who backed his election coup no longer respect the democratic rulebook, they suggest. "We got through the 2020 election, just barely. Even if we get through the 2024 election with our democracy intact, unless we reform our democracy, we will remain in this fragile position where every national election is a national emergency," Ziblatt said.

Biden's position before the debate was already perilous. One authoritative survey last week gave Trump a three-point national lead. He's ahead in all seven key swing states. Biden, if he can stay the course, needs a small miracle between now and November. Yet the alternative is utterly appalling. As one pundit put it, voters must choose between an old man and a conman.

How did it come to this? It's no way to run a country. Those founding fathers have a lot to answer for.

Simon Tisdall is the Observer's Foreign Affairs Commentator

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America's big problem is not Joe Biden, it's the menace to democracy posed by Donald Trump | Simon Tisdall

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The presidential debate was further proof of the fragility of the country's constitution. Radical reform is crucial, whoever wins in November

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Federalism State difference

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Oklahoma's state superintendent has announced that all schools are required to teach the Bible and the Ten Commandments, a dramatic move that reignites the conversation about the separation of church and state.

In a state board of education meeting on Thursday, state superintendent of public instruction Ryan Walters announced a new memo "that every school district will adhere to, which is that every teacher, every classroom in the state will have a Bible in the classroom and will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom to ensure that this historical understanding is there for every student in the state of Oklahoma in accordance with our academic standards and state law".

Walters called the Bible "one of the most foundational documents used for the constitution and the birth of our country".

He added: "The Bible is a necessary historical document to teach our kids about the history of this country, to have a complete understanding of western civilization, to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system."

Walters is also behind the recent push to create a new religious charter school which, like public schools, are funded by taxpayer dollars. But in a 6-2 decision, the Oklahoma supreme court ruled that the contract between the Oklahoma statewide virtual charter school board and the religious charter school was unconstitutional.'

In his opinion, state supreme court justice James Winchester wrote: "Under Oklahoma law, a charter school is a public school. As such, a charter school must be nonsectarian. However, St. Isidore will evangelize the Catholic faith as part of its school curriculum while sponsored by the State."

Walters faced calls for impeachment last year after sharing a TikTok video posted by far-right influencers that incited violence, including bomb threats at public school librarians.

He's also used social media to rail against "woke ideology". "Democrats say it doesn't exist. The liberal media denies the issue. Even some Republicans hide from it," Walters said on Twitter/X in 2023. "Woke ideology is real and I am here to stop it."

Democrats say it doesn't exist.

The liberal media denies the issue.

Even some Republicans hide from it.

Woke ideology is real and I am here to stop it. https://t.co/2hVc519ERK
- Superintendent Ryan Walters (@RyanWaltersSupt) August 22, 2023

The events in Oklahoma come amid a growing movement across the country led by religious activists to push Christianity in public education curriculum.

In June, Louisiana became the first state to pass a new law requiring all public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments in classroom. Parents and civil rights groups are suing the state over the law.

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Oklahoma state superintendent orders public schools to teach the Bible

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Ryan Walters calls Bible 'necessary document to teach kids' and says Ten Commandments will also be required learning

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Religious influence in USA

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God's army is on the march. And many of its foot soldiers are wearing "Make America great again" regalia, sensing that their unlikely standard bearer, former US president Donald Trump, is once again close to the promised land.

"I do not believe that America can survive another four years of Joe Biden," Ralph Reed, founder and chair of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, told a gathering of the religious right in Washington on Friday. "I haven't felt this way since Jimmy Carter was president." The audience burst into knowing laughter.

Reed promised they would knock on 10m doors of Christian and conservative voters in every battleground state, make 10m phone calls, send 25m text messages and put 30m voter guides in 113,000 churches, producing "the biggest turnout of Christian voters in American history".

The election result will be clear, he added. "This time there aren't gonna need to be any lawsuits. We're not going to have to go to court and we're not going to have to wait until 2.30 in the morning for Donald Trump to declare victory. He's going to do it at 9 o'clock at night!"

With Trump running ahead of Biden in many swing state polls, religious right voters scent a historic opportunity to impose a radical agenda that could ban abortion nationwide, curb LGBTQ+ rights and blur the separation of church and state. At Friday's conference, speaker after speaker framed it as righteous crusade and the only way to resist a tide of liberal secularism sweeping America.

Ben Carson, a former housing secretary in Trump's first term, praised Republican-dominated Louisiana for becoming the first state to require that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every government school classroom.

"Aren't you glad that yesterday the governor of Louisiana signed into law - put the Ten Commandments back in the schools?" he said to cheers and applause before warning of a 60-year communist project to change America by taking over schools, churches and Hollywood and removing God from the public square.

Josh Hawley, a Republican senator for Missouri, warned of a "radical anti-faith agenda" gripping the country. He said: "Who's dividing America is the radical left and that's why I say to you we don't need less Christian influence in our society, we don't need less Christian witness in our society; we need more in every part of government, in every part of society."

To approving roars from the audience, Hawley added: "We ought to take the Pride flag out of schools and put the Bible back in. You know what? We ought to take the trans flag down from all of our federal buildings and over every federal building in America write the words, 'In God we trust'. In God we trust. Amen. "

The couching of an Armageddon election, in which religious truth itself is at stake, with victory representing divine providence and defeat spelling total catastrophe, was crystallised by Monica Crowley, a rightwing political commentator and former assistant secretary of the treasury.

She described the election as a "hinge moment" comparable to the American Revolution, civil war, second world war and September 11 2001 terrorist attacks. She spoke of a "war" against "the enemy within" that has spent nearly half a century "infiltrating, undermining and destroying" America with "godless philosophies".

Crowley lamented that Hollywood no longer produces "patriotic films" like those of
John Wayne and, extraordinarily, defended the communist witch hunts of the 1950s. "Senator Joe McCarthy was right, and he was trying to ring the bell in the 1950s about communist infiltration in our government and the same deep state that is now going afterDonald Trump.

"The same deep state that removed Richard Nixon, the same deep state that went after Ronald Reagan and anybody else who stood up to them. That deep state became very insidious and in the 1950s smeared and attacked Joe McCarthy for speaking the truth about godless communism in very halls of our government."

Notably, little was said by the dozen main stage speakers about abortion, a live political grenade for which Republicans have struggled find a coherent message since the supreme court overturned the landmark Roe v Wade precedent two years ago.

Religious conservatives' pact with Trump appears to be holding. Some were sceptical about the thrice married reality TV star when he first ran for president in 2016 but the concerns were assuaged by his running mate, born-again evangelical Christian Mike Pence, and by a first team that saw him shift the judiciary to the right.

Not even Trump's conviction in New York last month on 34 felony counts in a trial involving hush money payments to an adult film star has shaken his grip on this constituency. Many who complain that their faith is under siege regard him as a blunt instrument with which to fight back against the radical left.

They often rationalise their vote by saying they are choosing a president, not a pastor. Some evangelicals have likened him to Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who, according to the Bible, enabled Jews to return to Israel from their exile in Babylon.

Hats with the slogan 'Make America Pray Again' in Tennessee. Photograph: Seth Herald/Reuters

Robert P Jones, the president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute thinktank in Washington, wrote on Substack recently: "The transformation of Trump from a person to a symbol is the key to understanding the power of the Maga movement and the internal logic of the upside-down world where a unanimous guilty verdict in a fair trial results in solidified support, record fundraising, and desperate Christian defenses of a convicted felon."

The presumptive Republican nominee has exploited this totemic status. Earlier this year he launched his own brand of Bible, selling for $59.99 each. During the trial, he shared social media posts that compared him to Jesus Christ.

At Friday's Road to Majority Policy Conference it was not uncommon to hear the Almighty and Trump spoken of in the same breath. Crowley said: "We do have a fearless leader in Donald Trump, where they have thrown the kitchen sink at this man over nine years and they cannot believe that he is still standing. Hand of God!"

Kari Lake, a Senate candidate in Arizona, said: "We gotta bring Him back into our culture, into our lives, into our hearts and souls - and then also let's work to bring Donald J Trump back on November 5."

Inside the upmarket Washington hotel hosting the conference, there were vendors selling Maga merchandise, lifesize cardboard cutouts of Trump and an area where attendees could pose with head shots of their choice for his running mate.

Stephen Sandrelli, 60, posed with a picture of Congresswoman Elise Stefanik against an Oval Office backdrop. "First of all, we've got to deport millions - at least 15 million people," he said of a second Trump term. "The Democrats are terrorists. They hate our nation. They hate humankind.

"They're trying to replace us - replacement theory, whatever you want to call it - and Trump cares about us. I believe he's a man that God has touched and he's doing the right thing. He's only blessed our country. He's only helped people."

Sandrelli, a former Democrat and federal government officer from Fitchburg, Massachusetts, added: "Anybody who supports abortion is supporting murder."

But sensing political danger, Trump has refused to endorse a national abortion ban. Some here felt let down. Wearing a red Maga cap, Thomas Dinkel, 16, who goes to a school in Morgantown, West Virginia, said: "I'm going to be honest with you: as a pro-life Christian, it hurts. I see why he and a lot of other national Republicans are doing it. They're slowly backing away from issue. It's ruffled some feathers.

"I do back an abortion ban. For right now, it's at the state level, and I respect that, but if it ever went as a federal ban, I would back that. I understand why Trump is having a stance on that, just like some other stances he's been taking lately. I pray that when he gets in the least he can do for the pro-life communities is continue to back and appoint pro-life justices."

But Dinkel will vote for Trump and is willing to overlook his moral shortcomings. "Listen, I'm a Christian. I mess up, you mess up. Everyone in this room messes up. We sin, we fall short, we turn away from God, and Trump has admitted to that. He's not the best person. He's not a perfect person. None of us are. He says that he's repented of his sins, and I'm called to forgive Trump. "

Dorothy Harpe, an African American woman who is retired from a church in Atlanta, Georgia, was wearing a Maga cap and badge that said: "Trump was right!" The 74-year-old said: "He tells the truth. People don't want to believe him, they think he always doing something wrong, but he's not. He's innocent of all the bogus charges they brought against him. God knows every man's heart, and I believe he is a Christian."

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In Trump we trust: religious right on crusade to make their man president

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America's evangelicals sense a chance to impose a radical agenda and resist what they see as a tide of liberal secularism

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Scotus and gun laws

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US supreme court upholds ban on domestic abusers possessing guns

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Ruling in US v Rahimi will leave in place legal protections against a major source of gun violence in the US

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Andrew Yang has 'had conversations' with third-party 2024 election group

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3rd party presidential Candidate?

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The tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, has "had conversations" with No Labels, a group considering launching a third-party candidate in the 2024 election.

"I've had conversations with various folks who are associated with No Labels," Yang told Politico.

Asked "repeatedly" if the group had asked him to be its candidate in an election shaping up to be a repeat of Joe Biden v Donald Trump in 2020, Yang "side-stepped a direct response", Politico said.

"We have a lot of friends and people in common," Yang said, while wearing a lapel pin promoting his own third-party effort, Forward, Politico noted.

Citing polling which shows scant public appetite for a rematch between Biden, 80, and Trump, 77, as well as widespread concern about the two men's ages, No Labels has trumpeted its fundraising for a possible third-party presidential tilt. Reporting, including by Mother Jones, has shown contributions from both sides of the political aisle.

Names linked to a No Labels candidacy have included Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia, and Larry Hogan, a former Republican governor of Maryland. Neither has counted out the possibility.

No Labels has attracted widespread opprobrium from anti-Trump campaigners, who fear a third-party candidate could peel off Biden voters and hand Trump a White House return even as he faces 91 criminal charges - 17 concerning election subversion and 40 over retention of classified information - and assorted civil suits.

On Tuesday, Reed Galen, a former Republican operative now part of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said: "If you didn't think ⁦No Labels was dangerous and unserious before, check out them talking to ⁦Andrew Yang, an unserious person who would love to be considered dangerous."

Having made his fortune in tech-angled investing, Yang showed well in the 2020 Democratic primary before fading. In 2021, he ran for New York mayor.

He told Politico he was an "anyone-but-Trump guy" and said: "I would not run for president if I thought that my running would be counterproductive, or if it would increase the chances of someone like Donald Trump becoming president again."

But he also said a Biden v Trump rematch would be "terribly unrepresentative and borderline ridiculous", adding: "I mean, you're talking about two guys whose combined age is [nearly] 160. In a country of 330 million people, you would choose these two gentlemen at this stage? I mean, it makes zero sense."

Third-party candidates have affected presidential elections. In 2000, the Green candidate, Ralph Nader, was widely seen to have peeled votes from the Democrat, Al Gore, in an election decided by fewer than 600 votes in Florida, in favour of the Republican George W Bush.

In 2016, another Green, Jill Stein, and the Libertarian, Gary Johnson, were seen to have undermined the Democrat, Hillary Clinton, in a tight election won by Trump.

Yang told Politico he thought the 2024 Green candidate, the academic Cornel West, would get more votes than Stein. He also predicted that Robert F Kennedy, the conspiracy theorist challenging Biden for the Democratic nomination, would be the Libertarian candidate.

Asked who he would vote for, he said: "The field's still coming together." He also said he would appear with Marianne Williamson, a self-help author also running for the Democratic nomination.

No Labels did not comment.

Yang is promoting a novel, The Last Election, co-written with Stephen Marche. In publicity material, the book is described as "a gripping, intricately plotted political thriller set on the campaign trail of the USA's next and - because of crucial flaws in the electoral system - its last election".

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Andrew Yang has 'had conversations' with third-party 2024 election group

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Tech entrepreneur and 2020 Democratic hopeful says he has spoken with No Labels, who are considering launching a candidate

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Latest abortion

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Mifepristone is administered to induce abortion

The US Supreme Court has rejected an effort to sharply restrict access to the abortion pill mifepristone.
The justices decided the plaintiffs, a group of anti-abortion doctors and activists, did not have a legal right to sue.

The decision, coming two years after the court rescinded the nationwide guarantee to an abortion, is a major win for pro-choice activists.

Mifepristone is one of two drugs used in a medication abortion, now the most common method of terminating pregnancies in the US.

The plaintiffs, known as the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, had argued that federal approval for the commonly used drug should be withdrawn.

The court struck down the nationwide guarantee, known as Roe v Wade, in 2022. Since then, 21 states have moved to restrict abortion earlier in pregnancy than the standard it set. Seventeen of those have barred the procedure at six weeks or earlier.

Medication abortion - using pills sent by mail - has quickly become an effective workaround to those bans.

The two-drug regimen was approved for use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2000. A patient is first given mifepristone to induce an abortion and then misoprostol to empty the uterus.

Since 2016, the FDA has eased access to the drug and has allowed doctors to hold virtual appointments with patients and for prescriptions to be sent by mail.

Throughout two decades of use, the FDA, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynaecologists (ACOG) and other mainstream medical organisations have maintained that both mifepristone and misoprostol are safe for use.

US studies say medication abortion is about 95% effective in ending pregnancy and requires further medical follow-up less than 1% of the time.

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Supreme Court rejects limits on abortion pill mifepristone

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Mifepristone is used in medication abortion, the most common method of ending pregnancies in the US.

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Missouri death row prisoner executed in state’s second lethal injection this year

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David Hosier, who maintained innocence in 2009 murders of Angela and Rodney Gilpin, pronounced dead at 6.11pm

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Podcast on US election finance

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Listen to this episode from The Rest Is Politics on Spotify. Is there too much money in US politics? Why do people donate to presidential campaigns? Who are the two women vying to be Mexico's next president? Join Katty Kay and Anthony Scaramucci for this week's episode of The Rest Is Politics: US as they answer all these questions and more.

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Trump says Arizona supreme court’s abortion ruling will be ‘straightened out’

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Dobbs / Roe and States' rights

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Trump says Arizona supreme court’s abortion ruling will be ‘straightened out’

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Ex-president who boasts about Roe’s fall say matter is ‘about states’ rights’ but concedes revived 160-year-old ban goes too far

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Trump says Arizona supreme court’s abortion ruling will be ‘straightened out’

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Trump says Arizona supreme court’s abortion ruling will be ‘straightened out’

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Ex-president who boasts about Roe’s fall say matter is ‘about states’ rights’ but concedes revived 160-year-old ban goes too far

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US Senate approves $95bn aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan

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Co-equal chambers. Power of the purse

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US Senate approves $95bn aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan

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Pre-dawn vote comes amid growing doubts about fate of legislation in Republican-controlled House of Representatives

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Christie set to drop out of US presidential race

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Chris Christie expected to drop out of US presidential race, further narrowing a field of Republican contenders led by Donald Trump

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'Did you just hear John Roberts scream?': US supreme court to have outsized influence in 2024 election

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Court influence in 2024

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The US supreme court, stacked with rightwing justices appointed by Donald Trump and facing a crisis of public confidence in its impartiality, has been thrust into the thick of the 2024 presidential election through a number of highly charged and critical cases.

Last week's dynamite ruling from the Colorado supreme court disqualifying Trump from the state's presidential primary ballot on grounds that he engaged in insurrection on 6 January 2021 is almost certain to end up before the country's highest court. Trump's legal team has indicated it will appeal, and the nine supreme court justices will be under pressure to take the case or risk legal confusion spreading as the election year unfolds.

In addition to the Colorado ruling, the top court was also asked to step into the legal battle between Trump and the department of justice's special counsel Jack Smith in the criminal prosecution of the former president over his attempt to subvert the 2020 election. At issue was whether Trump could claim presidential immunity even though he is no longer in the White House.

Earlier this month Smith asked the supreme court to expedite a decision to avoid delaying a criminal trial in Washington DC scheduled to begin on 4 March. On Friday the court issued a one-sentence denial, which returns the case back to a Washington DC-based federal appeals court, though it is likely to be only a matter of time before such a fundamental question wends its way back to the highest court for final adjudication.

Unlike 2000, the general political instability in the US makes the situation now much more precarious

Legal scholar Rick Hasen

The confluence of two white-knuckle legal tussles, both involving Trump and both having potentially far-reaching implications for the November election, threatens to drag the supreme court to the front and centre of the political fray. It comes at an awkward time for the court, which is already reeling from its own internal ethical scandals and plummeting public approval ratings.

The legal scholar Rick Hasen likened the situation in his Election Law Blog to the 2000 election in which the supreme court in Bush v Gore effectively handed the presidency to George Bush. "Unlike 2000, the general political instability in the US makes the situation now much more precarious," Hasen said. "The political ramifications of disqualification would be enormous."

To be shoved into the heart of the election battle is likely to be a deeply uncomfortable experience for all the justices, three of whom - Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett - were appointed by Trump. The prospect is especially fraught for the chief justice, John Roberts, who is known to be sensitive about public opinion and keen to keep the court above the political ruckus.

As the Colorado ruling was announced Mike Sacks, a writer on law and politics, quipped on social media: "Did you all just hear John Roberts scream too because I def did".

Legal pundits agree that the supreme court is almost duty bound to take the Colorado case and hear it expeditiously. David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said "it's crucial for all Americans that the issue of Trump's eligibility be resolved as soon as possible. The Republican party needs to know if it has a qualified nominee, election officials need to know who to name on the ballot, and the voters need to know who they can vote for."

Speed is all the more important given that Colorado's primary is fast approaching. It is scheduled for Super Tuesday, 5 March, when 17 states decide their preferred presidential candidates.

The Colorado ruling revolves around section 3 of the 14th amendment of the US constitution, which disqualifies from public office anyone who has "engaged in insurrection or rebellion". The decision raises a number of knotty legal issues which the supreme court has never faced before, including the core question of whether Trump acted as an insurrectionist in the buildup to, and on, 6 January 2021 when the US Capitol was stormed by his supporters.

Supreme court justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas flank Thomas's wife, Ginni, at a memorial service for Sandra Day O'Connor on 19 December 2023. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP

The justices will also have to deliberate on whether the 14th amendment can apply to a former president, and whether it requires a previous conviction related to insurrection for it to be invoked. Alternatively, the court might decide to sidestep such questions and avoid hearing the case on its merits, or knock the can down the road, though both those evasive options would leave a dark cloud of legal uncertainty hanging over the election.

Either way, there's likely to be no happy way out for the top court.

As Steve Vladeck, a constitutional law scholar at the University of Texas, put it on Substack: "There are significant chunks of the American populace that will find it very hard to respect a supreme court decision that keeps Trump off the ballot, and there are significant chunks of the American populace that will find it very hard to respect a supreme court decision that keeps Trump on the ballot."

Trust in the court has already been strained to breaking point. The latest opinion poll from Gallup in September showed that only 41% approve of the justices's job performance, close to a record low.

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The top court, under its new 6-3 Trump-secured supermajority of rightwing justices, has been embroiled in ethics scandals for much of this year. A series of blockbuster exposés by the investigative non-profit newsroom ProPublica has put it on the defensive, forcing the justices to adopt an ethics code last month.

In April, ProPublica revealed the lavish international travel and vacations enjoyed by the longest-serving justice, Clarence Thomas, courtesy of a Republican mega-donor from Texas, Harlan Crow. Later, the fellow rightwing justice Samuel Alito was shown to have flown on a private jet owned by the billionaire Paul Singer.

Would any reasonable person believe that Justice Thomas can be impartial here? Well, there's your answer

Gabe Roth of Fix the Court

Thomas's ethical woes go further than big money largesse. His wife, Ginni, was exposed by the US House investigation into the January 6 insurrection to have been deeply mired in Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, sending texts to then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows imploring him to keep fighting to block Joe Biden's victory.

A chorus of demands for Thomas to recuse himself from the Colorado case has already begun, even before the court accepts the appeal. Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a non-partisan group which advocates for reform, said that justices are under law required to step aside from cases where their impartiality might reasonably be questioned.

"Would any reasonable person believe that Justice Thomas can be impartial here? Well, there's your answer," Roth said.

The supreme court is likely to have an outsized influence on the 2024 presidential election in other less direct but potentially critical ways, not least in its stance over abortion. The court's polarising decision to overturn the right to an abortion in June 2022 has had a long-term political impact.

Backlash to the ruling led to the Democrats performing more strongly than expected in the midterm elections later that year. More recently, the Democratic governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear, won re-election and Democrats gained control of the legislature in Virginia, both on the back of abortion rights.

Into this febrile landscape, the supreme court is once again poised to meddle in the choices of American women with a second major abortion case currently on its docket. The justices are likely to rule by the end of June on mifepristone, one of two drugs used in most medication abortions which make up the majority of pregnancy terminations in the US.

With a decision likely to fall less than five months from the presidential election, another contentious ruling from the rightwing supermajority could have a dramatic bearing on the outcome of the race for the White House.

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'Did you just hear John Roberts scream?': US supreme court to have outsized influence in 2024 election

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Court temporarily waved off request from special counsel prosecuting Trump, but it'll likely soon have to wade into fray

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Trump off the primary ballot in Colorado?

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Colorado Supreme Court kicks Trump off ballot, citing ‘insurrection’

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The Trump campaign vows to challenge the historic decision, which does not apply to other states.

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As the NRA fades, a more zealous US pro-gun group rises as a lobbying power

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Gun rights lobbying

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As the NRA fades, a more zealous US pro-gun group rises as a lobbying power

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Gun Owners of America, formed in belief NRA was ‘too liberal’, spent $3.3m lobbying against gun control and boasts 2m members

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Republican presidential candidate Tim Scott drops out of 2024 race

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Another one bites the dust

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Republican presidential candidate Tim Scott has announced he is dropping out of the 2024 race, saying voters have been really clear in telling him: "'Not now'."

The South Carolina senator's departure shocked his own campaign staff.

Several told Sky's US partner NBC News they had no prior warning and only found out he was ending his White House bid while watching his surprise announcement on TV.

Mr Scott entered the race in May with high hopes, with millions spent on his behalf by high-profile donors.

However, he and the rest of the Republican field have struggled in a race dominated by former president Donald Trump.

2:40

"I love America more today than I did on 22 May," Mr Scott told Fox News Channel's Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy.

"But when I go back to Iowa, it will not be as a presidential candidate. I am suspending my campaign. I think the voters who are the most remarkable people on the planet have been really clear that they're telling me, 'Not now, Tim'."
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He is the second high-profile Republican to depart from the race in the last couple of weeks.

Former US vice president Mike Pence suspended his bid to become the next president after struggling to raise money and support for his campaign.

Mr Scott said he would not be making an endorsement of his remaining Republican rivals.

"The voters are really smart," Mr Scott said. "The best way for me to be helpful is to not weigh in on who they should endorse."

Despite four criminal indictments and other legal challenges, Mr Trump continues to poll far ahead of his rivals.

Many in the party believe the race is effectively over, barring some stunning change of fortune.

Mr Trump's campaign did not immediately respond to news of Mr Scott's exit.

The former president has been careful not to criticise the senator, leading some to consider Mr Scott a potential vice-presidential pick.

But Mr Scott appeared to rule out serving as vice president, saying the position "has never been on my to-do list for this campaign, and it's certainly not there now".

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Republican presidential candidate Tim Scott drops out of 2024 race

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The South Carolina senator's departure shocked his own campaign staff, with several telling Sky's US partner NBC News they had no prior warning and only found out he was ending his White House bid while watching his surprise announcement on TV.

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Louisiana must draw new congressional map by mid-January for 2024 elections

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Gerrymandering in Louisiana?

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The Louisiana state legislature has until the middle of January to enact a new congressional map after a federal court ruled that the state's current map illegally disfranchises Black voters in the state.

A conservative federal appeals court in New Orleans issued the deadline on Friday. According to the order, if the state legislature doesn't pass a new map by the deadline, then a lower district court should conduct a trial and develop a plan for the 2024 elections.

Whether the outgoing Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, will call a special session to redraw the political boundaries or if his elected Republican successor, Jeff Landry - who will be inaugurated on 8 January - will have enough time to call a special redistricting session and meet the court's deadline has yet to be determined.

Black voters in Louisiana represent about one-third of the state's population, but currently represent a majority in just one out of six congressional districts in the state.

Republicans have argued the current map is fair, with Democrats arguing the districts discriminate against Black voters in the state.

A lower court in June 2022 struck down Louisiana's current congressional map. The court ruled that the map violated the Voting Rights Act and ordered a new map to be drawn that includes a second congressional district with a majority of Black voters.

The ruling was appealed to the US fifth circuit court of appeal. Black voters in Louisiana pushed for an emergency appeal to expedite the new map drawing before the 2024 election year, though that was rejected in October.

A special session of the Louisiana legislature now has until 15 January to decide on a new congressional map. Governor Edwards has yet to call that session, though he has said he plans to do so.

"As I have said all along, Louisiana can and should have a congressional map that represents our voting population, which is one-third Black," Edwards said in a statement on the recent ruling. "This is about simple math, basic fairness, and the rule of law.

"With the fifth circuit's action today, I remain confident that we will have a fair map with two majority Black districts before the congressional elections next year."

US House representative Troy Carter of New Orleans, Louisiana's sole Black and Democratic member of Congress, said he "sincerely" hopes the state's legislature will draw a new map with a second majority-Black district. Carter posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, to urge lawmakers to "do the right thing" and that "there is no need to wait for a court to force compliance with clear law".

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Edwards leaves office on 8 January, when his elected Republican successor, Jeff Landry, will be inaugurated. If it's left to Landry to call a special session after his inauguration, the timing will be tricky.

The session couldn't start until seven days after the proclamation is issued, meaning the earliest lawmakers could return to Louisiana's state house in Baton Rouge is the 15 January deadline.

Landry did not immediately comment on Friday. The appellate court's order does say the district court retains the discretion to grant "limited additional time" if requested.

If the legislature refuses to draw a new map, a trial will be held in the district court. Plaintiffs in the case could object to the plan and new map, which will then be determined by the court if it is compliant under the Voting Rights Act.

"The court is to conclude all necessary proceedings in sufficient time to allow at least initial review by this court and for the result to be used for the 2024 Louisiana congressional elections," the fifth circuit's court order said.

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Louisiana must draw new congressional map by mid-January for 2024 elections

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Deadline comes after federal court ruled that state's current map disfranchises Black voters - one-third of the state's population

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Democrats won big on abortion rights Tuesday. Here’s what the results say for the US going into 2024

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Off year Elections go well for Democrats

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Democrats won big on abortion rights Tuesday. Here’s what the results say for the US going into 2024

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Abortion rights supporters won big in an Ohio ballot measure. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear was reelected in Kentucky after running television ads painting his challenger as extremist on abortion.

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The High-Stakes Races on the Ballot in the Nation's Off-Off-Year Elections

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Off year Elections 2023

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2023 isn't just an off-year election - it's an off-off-year election. But in several states, important races will be on the ballot Nov. 7.

Kentuckians will decide whether Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear wins a second term, while Mississippi is holding a surprisingly competitive race for governor. Both states will also hold contests for attorney general and secretary of state.

Virginia, meanwhile, has a high-stakes election to determine control of both the state Senate, which today is narrowly Democratic, and the state House, which is narrowly Republican. New Jersey will also be holding state legislative elections, although Democrats are favored to retain control in both chambers in the Garden State.

In Pennsylvania, voters will decide whether to extend the Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court to 5-2 or narrow it to 4-3.

In Ohio, measures to protect abortion access and permit recreational use of marijuana will be on the ballot, while Maine will be asking whether the state's electricity utilities should be publicly owned.

Here's a rundown of what's on the ballot this year.

In Louisiana's all-party primary for governor Oct. 14, Republican Jeff Landry crossed the 50% threshold, meaning he avoided a Nov. 18 runoff. We had rated this contest Safe Republican.

This leaves two 2023 gubernatorial races still to be decided. Both are more competitive than Louisiana's.

In Kentucky, Beshear - the son of former Gov. Steve Beshear - faces Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a protege of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Despite Kentucky's strong Republican leaning, Beshear has benefited from incumbency and strong approval ratings. He's also painted Cameron as too conservative on abortion, even in a red state.

A late October poll for a conservative political action committee found Beshear up by 2 points, while a mid-October poll for Beshear's campaign found the incumbent up by 8 points. We've rated this contest Lean Democratic.

Mississippi's gubernatorial race, meanwhile, has continued to be closer than expected despite being run in one of the nation's reddest states.

Incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves faces Democrat Brandon Presley, an elected member of the state Public Service Commission (and a distant relative of Elvis Presley). Presley has hammered away at government corruption, advocated cutting the state's grocery and car taxes, and said he would expand Medicaid, which Reeves has long fought.

A Democrat hasn't won an election for Mississippi governor since 1999, and just four years ago, another seemingly strong Democratic challenger, long-serving Attorney General Jim Hood, lost to Reeves in an open-seat contest by 5 points.

Political Cartoons on Congress

However, a Democratic-sponsored mid-October poll by Public Policy Polling found Reeves up by only a point, and another Democratic poll by Impact Research found the same spread. This suggests a surprisingly close race. If no candidate surpasses 50%, a runoff will be held.

To win, Presley will have to energize Black voters to overcome Democrats' structural disadvantages in heavily Republican Mississippi. But doing that is not out of the question. We're shifting this race from our previous rating of Likely Republican to Lean Republican.
State Legislative Contests
Virginia is hosting high-stakes contests for both of its legislative chambers that could spell the difference between Republican hopes for enacting GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin's conservative agenda and a continued defensive role for Democrats on policy in the state.

All 100 seats in the GOP-controlled House and all 40 in the Democratic-controlled Senate will be contested, though only a handful in each chamber are poised to be highly competitive. The contests will be held in freshly redrawn districts that prompted a flurry of incumbent retirements in both chambers.

To win Senate control, the GOP would need to flip two Democratic-held seats, while holding all of their own. That would force a 20-20 tie that would be broken by Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears.

In the House, the results in about eight highly competitive districts will likely determine who wins the majority. Republicans currently have a 52-48 majority in the chamber. Most of the competitive contests are in districts that Youngkin won in 2021 but that voted Democratic in U.S. House races the following year. They tend to be in suburban and exurban portions of Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads.

While a recent Washington Post-George Mason University poll found that Virginia voters approve of Youngkin's job performance by a 54%-38% margin, the poll also found Democrats were concerned about allowing the GOP to take full legislative control, fearing the party would enact Youngkin's proposal to ban abortion after 15 weeks. The poll found that among women, 70% said abortion was a "very important" issue, up from 47% in the 2019 legislative elections. Among men, the share saying that rose from 45% to 50%.

The survey also found that 48% of all voters see unified Republican control as a "bad thing" and 43% as a "good thing." Other polls asking for voters' generic partisan preferences in legislative races found slight advantages for the Democrats. This suggests that the battlefield is close, with any outcome possible.

In New Jersey, meanwhile, both chambers of the state legislature are controlled by the Democrats, as they have been for the better part of two decades. Democrats have a 25-15 edge in the Senate and a 46-34 lead in the Assembly. Democrats also control the governorship. incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy is not up for election this year.

Republicans see some signs that the political environment could produce gains for their party, such as the recent indictment of Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez, weak approval ratings for President Joe Biden, and a better-than-expected showing for the GOP in the 2021 gubernatorial election.

Still, New Jersey Republicans would need some excellent luck in swing districts to pull off a flip of either chamber.
State Supreme Court Races
The biggest judicial race of 2023 is for a state Supreme Court seat in Pennsylvania, which became vacant when Justice Max Baer died in September 2022.

In party primaries, Republicans nominated Carolyn Carluccio, who was first elected as a judge on the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas in 2009, while Democrats nominated Daniel McCaffery, who was elected in 2019 to Superior Court, an appeals court.

Democrats have had a majority on the Supreme Court since they won three open seats in 2015, and that edge has helped the party in overturning GOP-leaning district maps and rejecting Donald Trump-aligned challenges to how the 2020 election was run in the state. As is the case in Virginia, abortion could be a motivating factor that benefits Democrats.

Since Democrats currently have a 4-2 edge on the court, losing the race this year wouldn't immediately flip partisan control to the GOP. But it could make the court easier to flip Republican during the next couple years.

Voters in several states will face major ballot measures this year, notably in Ohio and Maine.

In Ohio, voters will consider the highest profile measure this year: Ohio Issue 1, which would establish a state constitutional right to "make and carry out one's own reproductive decisions," while allowing the state to restrict abortion after fetal viability, as was the case under Roe v. Wade before the Supreme Court overturned it in 2022. The Republican and Democratic parties are on opposite sides of Issue 1.

In August, Ohio voters rejected a measure that would have raised the threshold for passage of ballot measures to 60%. It was rejected by a 57%-43% margin. That was a victory for abortion-rights advocates, because it meant the November abortion measure can pass with just a simple majority. Despite Ohio's increasingly Republican leaning, the measure is expected to pass the 50% threshold.

Ohio voters will also consider Ohio Issue 2, which would permit the recreational use of marijuana for adults 21 and over, allowing cultivation (including at home) as well as processing, sale, purchase and possession. Sales would be taxed at 10%.

The marijuana measure is less certain to pass than the abortion measure, but it stands a reasonable chance of winning.

In Maine, voters will consider Question 3, which would turn two existing for-profit electric providers in Maine into a single, publicly owned utility called Pine Tree Power. The idea's supporters, including independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and the Sierra Club, argue that a publicly owned utility would help reduce rates, improve customer service and heighten grid reliability.

However, the state's AFL-CIO and the state Chamber of Commerce both oppose the measure, arguing that the acquisition cost could reach $13.5 billion, putting Pine Tree Power in a debt hole from day one. Democratic Gov. Janet Mills also vetoed a similar plan.

Question 3 could go either way on Election Day, experts say. So could a related measure, Question 1, which would require voter approval for certain state entities, including utilities, to incur more than $1 billion in debt. Question 1 is effectively a countermeasure backed by Avangrid Inc., the parent of one of the privately owned utilities.

Maine voters will also consider Question 4, which would confirm that vehicle owners and independent car repair shops can access information, tools and software to repair vehicles, something critics say are sometimes hoarded by auto manufacturers. Massachusetts voters approved a similar law in 2012 and a related measure in 2020.

The gubernatorial races in Kentucky and Mississippi are competitive, but the attorney general races are less so.

In Kentucky, voters will fill the open seat created when Cameron decided to run for governor.

The favorite is GOP nominee Russell Coleman, who served as legal counsel to McConnell and was appointed by Trump to serve as U.S. attorney for Kentucky's western district.

His opponent, Democrat Pamela Stevenson, serves in the state House and spent 27 years in the Air Force, including extensive legal experience as a judge advocate general.

Coleman's party affiliation, his background in rural Kentucky, and his tough-on-crime approach make him the favorite.

In Mississippi, Republican Lynn Fitch is seeking a second term against Greta Kemp Martin, the litigation director of Disability Rights Mississippi. Fitch is the clear favorite.

Meanwhile, Louisiana will hold its runoff for attorney general on Nov. 18.

Solicitor General Liz Murrill, the top deputy to Landry, Louisiana's incoming governor, easily won one of the two runoff slots for attorney general, taking 45% of the all-party primary vote. She was the most conservative candidate in the race as well as the best funded.

Democratic attorney Lindsey Cheek won the other runoff slot by taking 23% of the all-party primary vote. In deeply red Louisiana, Murrill is a prohibitive favorite in the runoff.

Kentucky and Mississippi also have secretary of state contests this year.

In Kentucky, Republican incumbent Michael Adams negotiated bipartisan electoral reforms with Beshear, a Democrat, which has given him some crossover appeal. Democratic nominee Buddy Wheatley, a former state representative, is considered a credible candidate. Still, incumbency and the state's red tint should help Adams.

In Mississippi, Republican incumbent Michael Watson is seeking a second term and should easily defeat Democrat Ty Pinkins. Pinkins, an attorney and Iraq War veteran, replaced the original Democratic nominee, Shuwaski Young, after Young dropped out for health reasons.

And Louisiana has a Nov. 18 runoff to fill the seat of Republican Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, who decided to retire, citing the "pervasive lies" of election deniers. Former state Rep. Nancy Landry, who has worked in Ardoin's office for four years (and who is not related to the incoming governor), finished first in the all-party primary, though only narrowly. Landry won a bit over 19%, ahead of four other Republicans who each won between 6% and 18% of the vote.

She will face Democratic attorney, accountant, and small business owner Gwen Collins-Greenup, who finished second in the primary.

Observers expect the GOP vote to consolidate in the runoff. Collins-Greenup has previously run twice for secretary of state, losing to Ardoin both times with 41% of the vote. A similar result is expected this year.

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The High-Stakes Races on the Ballot in the Nation's Off-Off-Year Elections

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Voters are heading to the polls to decide critical races for governor as well as for state legislatures, judicial positions and ballot measures.

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Mike Pence: Former US Vice President withdraws from 2024 presidential race

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Pence withdraws before any primary vote

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Mike Pence: Former US Vice President withdraws from 2024 presidential race

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The former US vice president says he has “no regrets” after ending his bid to be the Republican nominee.

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'Get the right cases to the supreme court': inside Charles Koch's network

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Methods - going to the courts / money

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The Koch network, a web of rightwing groups cultivated by billionaire businessman Charles Koch and his late brother David Koch, is spearheading the attack on federal agencies and government regulations that dominates the US supreme court agenda this term.

The network has been working behind the scenes to bring cases before the court that, if successful, could undermine many of the core functionings of the US government. At least two of the biggest cases to be considered by the justices this term have been spurred by groups bankrolled and coordinated within the Koch universe.

Embed for Documented co-publishing

Footage of an internal panel discussion between senior operatives from Koch entities held in the summer of 2022 reveals that the network has been quietly planning the current assault on the "administrative state". The groups are seeking to exploit the supreme court's new six-to-three rightwing majority secured by Donald Trump to dismantle vital executive powers.

Regulatory controls in their sights include environmental standards to combat pollution and the climate crisis, consumer protections against predatory lenders, and safeguards for workers' rights. At stake is what the Strict Scrutiny podcast has called "the future of government as we know it".

The footage, which is made public here for the first time, was obtained by the investigative watchdog Documented and shared with the Guardian. During the 37-minute panel discussion, legal strategists with several Koch-related groups expressed excitement that the new hard-right supreme court supermajority has created the potential for a concerted attack on the functions of federal agencies.

Jorge Lima, an economic policy strategist at the Koch network's central coordinating group, Stand Together, said that the new composition of the court amounted to a huge "landscape opportunity, particularly on the administrative state. We're doubling down on this strategy."

Lima added: "Every dog has its day, and it's a big day for the administrative state."

Casey Mattox, a legal strategist at the main Koch advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity, argued that the supreme court was now "primed for a real change in the law" on federal regulations which he said amounted to a "paradigm shift". Mattox said: "That's why we are partnering with organizations that can get the right cases to the supreme court."

The effort appears to have born fruit. Two of the most significant cases before the court in the 2023-24 term, brought with the backing of Koch-linked organizations, attempt to rein back the government's power to impose regulations on corporations.

The prominence of the cases underlines how the libertarian empire created by the Kochs is still a force to be reckoned with within US politics. Since David Koch's death in 2019, and the Koch network's decision to come out in opposition to Trump ahead of next year's presidential election, the network has receded from public attention.

[Charles Koch's] business operations have a substantial self-interest in assailing regulations that impede his profits

Lisa Graves

But the scope of Charles Koch's reach remains formidable, as was demonstrated earlier this month when the 87-year-old told Forbes that he had given $4.3bn of his Koch Industries stock to Believe in People, a newly-created group named after his book of the same title. He has transferred a further $975m to another new entity, CCKc4, which carries the initials of his son Chase Koch.

The massive combined $5.3bn in donations, one of the largest acts of giving to non-profits in US history, will ensure that the Koch influence will continue to push the US to the right for years to come. Undermining government regulations is central to those ambitions.

Lisa Graves, the executive director of the progressive watchdog True North Research who is a long-time Koch watcher, said that Charles Koch has shown a "fundamental hostility to government regulation" since his early political writings in the 1960s. "This is the through-line of his career. His business operations have a substantial self-interest in assailing regulations that impede his profits."

Koch Industries is a conglomerate of energy and chemicals companies that stand to benefit if controls on pollution, workers' rights and other aspects of public governance are rolled back. The firm is the second largest privately-owned company in the US.

Koch Industries is a conglomerate of energy and chemicals companies and is the second largest privately-owned company in the US. Photograph: Charles Krupa/AP

Among the big administrative state cases that the justices will be considering this term is Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo, which seeks to overturn a 40-year precedent set by the supreme court itself. Known as Chevron, the ruling allows federal agencies the flexibility to reasonably interpret laws without interference from the courts as they regulate critical parts of public life, such as the environment and public safety.

Experts have warned that if Chevron is struck down, it could be a recipe for legal and administrative chaos. "We are talking about rules that protect us in so many ways - truckers who are too tired to drive on the highway, unsafe workplaces, and pollution of our water and the air we breathe," Graves said.

The case was nominally brought by a New Jersey herring fishing company that objected to being charged by a federal agency that monitors its catch to prevent over-fishing. Behind the challenge is a conservative group called Cause of Action, which is intricately tied to the Koch network.

The chair of Cause of Action's board, Brian Menckes, is general counsel of the Charles Koch Foundation. Cause of Action's executive director, James Valvo, who is acting as one of the fishing company's lawyers in the case, is the former head of policy of Americans for Prosperity.

A second lawyer representing the company, Eric Bolinder, holds dual roles as a counsel for Cause of Action and Americans for Prosperity.

In 2021 Cause of Action's entire income of $375,000 came from Stand Together, the Koch network's coordinating group, Bloomberg reported. The groups are also physically close: Cause of Action and Americans for Prosperity not only share the same address in Arlington, Virginia, they occupy the same office - suite 700.

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Bolinder was one of the panel speakers at the 2022 Koch discussion on the administrative state. He framed the plan to use the supreme court to launch a legal attack on regulatory government as a states' rights issue.

"As the federal government grabs more and more power, particularly to the regulatory state, the states become less and less important," he said.

The Guardian contacted Stand Together and Cause of Action for comment. Cause of Action did not immediately reply.

Gretchen Reiter, Stand Together spokesman, said that the Loper Bright case was seeking "to restore one of the core tenets of our democracy: that Congress, not the administrative agency, makes the laws. Cause of Action Institute - which filed the lawsuit in 2020 - is representing family-run fishing companies that the federal government is forcing to pay a tax that Congress never authorized, and that violates our constitution's separation of powers."

Last week, the supreme court accepted a second case also challenging the Chevron precedent, which has now been consolidated with the fishermen's petition. Relentless v Department of Commerce was also filed by a group with intimate connections to the Koch network, the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA).

The organization, which claims to "protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the administrative state", was founded in 2017 with seed money from the Charles Koch Foundation. Over five years, it has received more than $5m from the Koch network.

NCLA's president, Mark Chenoweth, previously served as in-house counsel for Koch Industries.

NCLA submitted an amicus brief last week supporting another major challenge to regulatory agencies that will be heard by the supreme court this term. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) v Jarkesy threatens to gut the enforcement power of the SEC by curtailing its ability to fast-track cases of securities fraud through its own in-house administrative law judges.

A ruling against the SEC could drastically reduce the ability of numerous government agencies to enforce environmental and other standards.

The footage of the Koch panel discussion obtained by Documented reveals that the NCLA has been secretly lobbying for the Jarkesy case to reach the supreme court. Mattox said that "NCLA brought a lot of value to that case".

He went on: "You won't see them actually directly litigating on that case, but they've done a lot of work behind the scenes, and that speaks to the way that our community adds value here, because when we partner with people we look for results, not necessarily for headlines and attention-grabbing."

There is a further twist to the issue of Koch influence on the supreme court's docket this term. Last month, ProPublica revealed as part of its expose of ethical breaches by some justices, that the right-leaning Clarence Thomas had attended at least two Koch donor events where funds were raised to forward the Koch network's mission - which includes bringing cases before the court.

The attack on the administrative state is central to the work of Americans for Prosperity, which boasts of its years-long campaign to challenge what it calls the "out-of-control regulatory environment imposed by Washington". It organizes bus tours around the country, directly relating "red tape" on energy infrastructure projects to the high cost of fuel at the pump.

This has taken place while oil and gas giants such as Exxon, BP and Shell have posted record profits, and the world has increasingly felt the impact of climate change. Americans for Prosperity calls itself "the nation's premier grassroots organization", but according to an independent audit report from 2021, 94% of the $112m in cash it received that year came from just two donors.

This article was produced in partnership with Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism project. Nick Surgey is Documented's executive director

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'Get the right cases to the supreme court': inside Charles Koch's network

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Billionaire's web of rightwing groups works to bring cases to court that could undermine core functionings of the US government

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GOP leadership crisis deepens as House remains paralyzed with no end in sight to speaker's race | CNN Politics

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GOP factions

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GOP leadership crisis deepens as House remains paralyzed with no end in sight to speaker's race | CNN Politics

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Republicans are confronting a deepening leadership crisis that has left the House paralyzed with no clear path to elect a new speaker, after an effort to replace Kevin McCarthy following his historic ouster was derailed by entrenched opposition and deep divisions within the party.

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Why do eight radicals hold power over the entire US House of Representatives? | David Daley

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Division in Congress

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It's simple math: when the score reads 210 to 8, the side with the much tinier number should lose.

Yet that's not how it works in the US House of Representatives.

On Tuesday, a mutiny led by eight hardline conservatives toppled speaker Kevin McCarthy and plunged the House into chaos. Rattled financial markets declined steeply and the prospects for a government shutdown six weeks from now rose dramatically. The 15-round, days-long speaker battle that McCarthy finally won in January might seem like a short dash compared to the marathon to come.

The unforgivable sin that led Representative Matt Gaetz and a small band of Republican insurgents to move on McCarthy now? The six-week, bipartisan compromise that the speaker brokered this weekend to prevent a government shutdown that would have further shaken markets, made air travel more dangerous, and halted paychecks for millions of workers, including in the military.

Eight members shouldn't have this outsized power. Leaders who recognize the reality of compromise under divided government shouldn't be ousted for working toward an accord. Yet our system incentivizes extremism and anti-majoritarianism. It will only get worse until we change the rules and stop punishing what a functional democracy would reward.

It's true that McCarthy all but sealed his fate when he agreed to allow just one member of his caucus - in this case, Gaetz - to call a vote to vacate the chair. This condition of earning the Gaetz faction's support back in January contained the seeds of his demise; as the principle of Chekhov's Gun holds, a weapon introduced in the first act always returns before the end of the play.

It's also true that Democrats - every one of whom voted against the speaker - provided the bulk of the votes that deposed McCarthy, as more reasonable voices within both parties failed to chart a path together that did not empower extremists.

"Now what?" cried one frustrated Republican after the vote. It's a great question. There's obviously no bipartisan consensus candidate. But which Republican could gain the trust and support of the majority of the caucus, and also the victorious far right? Who would take the job under the conditions forced on McCarthy? Why would Gaetz and his allies now settle for anything less? The entire incentive structure has gone berserk.

There's more than enough blame to go around. Yet none of the partisan finger-pointing will solve the problem. Anti-majoritarian rules brought us to this ungovernable place. Fixing them is the only way out.

The good news is that's actually not so hard. If the House elected leaders with ranked-choice voting (RCV), this debacle could have been avoided from the beginning. Imagine how different this would have been. The Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries would have led after the first round. McCarthy would have been second. And the Republican Freedom Caucus protest candidate would have finished a distant third. No one would have earned a majority, so an instant runoff would have kicked in.

The Republican rebels would have been forced to make up their minds. When the options came down to McCarthy or Jeffries, they'd have to make a choice. Rather than being obstructionist kingmakers and winning concessions disproportionate to their numbers, Gaetz and his crew would have been heard - and that's it. Under RCV, a gaggle of Gaetzes don't get to run the show. They have a voice in line with their actual numbers. And then majorities prevail.

If the House used ranked-choice voting, McCarthy would not have been forced into a deal that allowed any one member to call for a vote to vacate the chair. Gaetz and his allies might have been furious that the Republican speaker went around them to win overwhelming bipartisan majorities to keep the government open. But they would not have had the power to destabilize the entire institution. Eight renegades could have criticized the deal all they wanted. They wouldn't get to win.

Now what, indeed. By early November, the House will need to pass a funding package that keeps the government open. The deal this past weekend reflected the reality of a divided government. Cooler heads found a way toward an imperfect deal that reflected the best winnable compromise. That's how divided government works.

The cost of compromise cannot be that the furthest extreme gets to manipulate the game to bring down those who dare make a deal. That's a recipe for permanent dysfunction - and deepening minority rule.

After all, Matt Gaetz didn't even win office with a majority. Gaetz won his seat in Congress in 2016 with just 36% of the vote - and merely 35,689 votes - in a crowded Republican primary. He has won re-election since then thanks to the power of incumbency and a district wildly gerrymandered to ensure a Republican victor.

Gaetz, in other words, represents the fringe of the fringe - a plurality winner in a district rigged to be uncompetitive from the get-go. This is yet another problem that a ranked-choice election would solve. The Gaetz Caucus wouldn't be able to win election simply by appealing to a far fringe that values confrontation and chaos without any concern for the consequences. We have a Congress filled with members responsive only to a radical minority. If we want a different Congress, one responsive to majorities, one where the people rule and not the far fringe, we need to remake the rules.

In that Congress, the fairer one America deserves, forging consensus that Americans desire would be rewarded, not repudiated. Matt Gaetz might be one of 435 members, but his caucus of eight wouldn't hold power over the rest of us. And those 36,000 primary voters who cast a ballot for Gaetz seven years ago wouldn't get to call the shots for all 300 million of us.

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Why do eight radicals hold power over the entire US House of Representatives? | David Daley

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There are hundreds of Congresspeople representing millions of Americans - yet undemocratic rules give people like Matt Gaetz outsized sway

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US one step closer to avoiding government shutdown

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Congress and power of the purse

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US one step closer to avoiding government shutdown

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The House of Representatives approves a temporary funding solution - which excludes aid for Ukraine.

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GOP hardliners sink Pentagon bill in another blow for McCarthy | CNN Politics

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GOP hardliners sink Pentagon bill in another blow for McCarthy | CNN Politics

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The House on Thursday has voted down a rule that would have advanced a Defense Department bill, another stumbling block for Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Republican leadership ahead of a looming government shutdown deadline.

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Biden impeachment inquiry: House to investigate president’s ‘corruption’

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Check on President or hyper partisanship?

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Biden impeachment inquiry: House to investigate president’s ‘corruption’

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Senior Republican Kevin McCarthy says the inquiry will investigate allegations of abuse of power.

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Take another look at Joe Biden. His is the presidency progressives have been waiting for | Jonathan Freedland

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Biden Presidency evaluation +

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he tragedy of Joe Biden is that people see his age, his frailty and his ailing poll numbers and they miss the bigger story. Which is that his has been a truly consequential presidency, even a transformational one. In less than three years, he has built a record that should unify US progressives, including those on the radical left, and devised an economic model to inspire social democratic parties the world over, including here in Britain.

Sadly for Biden, politics and government are different things: it takes more than a record of good governance to get reelected. For one thing, voters cast their ballots less as a verdict on the past than as an instruction (or hope) for the future. And the fear, shared by 76% of Americans, according to a poll this week, is that Biden, who would be 86 at the end of a second term, is simply too old to lead them there. Put aside the fact that his near certain opponent in November 2024, Donald Trump, is only three years younger. Trump has a presence and vigour, an ability to project himself, that Biden does not. And that simple fact affects - distorts - the entire way the Biden administration is seen. As one observer puts it, " the vibes are off ".

The challenge for Democrats is to use the 14 months between now and election day to get past that, to point out the malignancy of Trump and the danger a second Trump presidency would represent to the republic and the world - and also to make the positive case for what we might call Bidenism. Luckily, that is not a hard case to make.

That's because, though elected to be no more than a calm hand on the tiller, a stopgap, interim leader who might allow the country to steady itself after four years of Storm Donald, Biden has confounded that expectation. He has none of the stage presence of his old boss, Barack Obama - who never had any trouble with vibes - but he can already claim to have achieved much more.

Top of the list is, characteristically, something that sounds boring but is of enormous significance: the Inflation Reduction Act, passed last year. That seemingly technocratic piece of legislation actually achieves two epochal goals. First, it hastens the day the US makes the break from fossil fuels - by making clean energy not only the morally superior option for both industry and consumers, but the financially superior one too.

It does that through a massive raft of tax breaks, subsidies and incentives all designed to encourage the production of wind turbines, solar panels, ever improving battery technology, geothermal plants and the like, along with tax credits aimed at making electric cars irresistible even to those middle-American consumers more concerned about their wallets than the burning planet.

The estimated cost of $386bn is huge, but that's not a limit on how much Biden has committed to spend. On the contrary, if the demand is there for solar panels or electric vans, Biden's law obliges the US government to keep spending. A calculation by Credit Suisse reckoned the figure could rise to $800bn, which will in turn unleash $1.7tn in private-sector spending on green technology. Small wonder that everyone from environmental activists to Goldman Sachs hailed the act as a "gamechanger" in the fight to tackle the climate emergency.

But the second goal of the legislation is almost as significant. Biden insisted that this surge in green manufacturing would happen inside the US, thereby reviving industrial towns and cities in decline since the 1980s. It is US factories that are getting the subsidies to build all this clean tech - alongside an earlier, huge package of infrastructure spending - restoring jobs to workers who had long been written off.

The Inflation Reduction Act is the centrepiece of Bidenomics, an approach that resurrects Democratic principles discarded in the Bill Clinton years, seemingly for ever: old-school industrial policy centred on an activist state making serious public investment in manufacturing; muscular regulation of corporations; and warm encouragement of unionised labour. ("When unions win, Americans across the board win," says Biden.) Which is one reason why the AFL-CIO trade union, echoing Goldman Sachs, also hailed the act as a "gamechanger" for working people.

The passage of the legislation - all the more remarkable given a Senate then split 50-50 between the parties - and its impact are set out in an outstanding new book on the Biden presidency, The Last Politician by Franklin Foer. He describes how Biden, whose hands were already full with the Covid pandemic and the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, was not content simply to be a caretaker manager, troubleshooting crises. Instead, "he set out to transform the country through some of the biggest spending bills that have ever been proposed", Foer told me when we spoke this week.

The result is that Biden has "redirected the paradigm" of US economic life in a way that will affect Americans "for a generation". While Obama and Clinton were "deferential to markets", says Foer, Biden has reversed "the neoliberal consensus" in place since the Ronald Reagan era. He doesn't leave corporations alone; he gets stuck in, taking on de-facto monopolies, reviving "anti-trust" policies that had long been abandoned. ("Capitalism without competition isn't capitalism," insists Biden. "It's exploitation.") "Like Reagan, Biden is resetting the economic trajectory of the nation," adds Foer. "In fact, as a matter of substance, he is the most transformational president since Reagan."

Internationally, the change is not as dramatic, but Biden is credited with bringing stability after the chaos and dictator-coddling of the Trump years and, especially, for building and maintaining a western alliance in support of Ukraine as it defends itself against Russian imperialism. Others admire his handling of China: robust, without crossing the line where a cold war turns hot.

There's more to the Biden record than this, of course. Inflation is not at European levels, but Americans are feeling the cost of higher prices. And plenty had their confidence in the president shaken two summers ago, when they saw images of a scrambled, chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan, to say nothing of the climate activists who cannot forgive his approval of an oil-drilling project in Alaska. His poll numbers point to a grim truth about politics: that it can be a cruel business. No matter how strong his record, Biden looks older and shakier than Trump and he is less entertaining. And those may be reasons enough for him to lose.

For now, the Biden presidency is a reminder of why politics matters, why political skills matter, including the dark, sometimes ugly arts of getting legislation passed, often through painful compromise. It also suggests a possible, unexpected formula for success, one Labour might study closely: campaign in reassuring prose, but govern in radical poetry. Biden was no one's idea of a fire-breathing leftist: that's one reason why he was able to win. But once you're in, you can dare to be bold. Once you have power, be sure to use it.

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Take another look at Joe Biden. His is the presidency progressives have been waiting for | Jonathan Freedland

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With Trump looming, Biden could still lose the White House. But this has been a transformative period of achievement, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland

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Amid rumbling scandal over gifts given to conservative justices by wealthy rightwing donors, one such justice, Samuel Alito, became the subject of an ethics complaint filed by a senior Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said recent public comments by Alito "appear to violate several canons of judicial ethics, including standards the supreme court has long applied to itself".

Whitehouse lodged the complaint in a letter to the chief justice, John Roberts.

Alito is an acerbic voice in the conservative bloc that dominates the court, counting Roberts among its members. Earlier this year, Alito was the subject of a report by ProPublica detailing an undeclared fishing holiday with the billionaire Paul Singer.

Another conservative justice, Clarence Thomas, has been the subject of multiple reports about undeclared gifts, by ProPublica and other outlets. Both justices deny wrongdoing but Alito has been much more assertive in hitting back at critics.

To Roberts, Whitehouse wrote: "The Wall Street Journal on 28 July 2023 published an interview with Justice Alito conducted by David Rivkin and James Taranto. Justice Alito's comments during that interview give rise to this complaint."

The interview was headlined "Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court's Plain-Spoken Defender".

Whitehouse continued: "The interview had the effect, and seemed intended, to bear both on legislation I authored and on investigations in which I participate. During the interview, Justice Alito stated that 'no provision in the constitution gives [Congress] the authority to regulate the supreme court - period'.

"Justice Alito's comments appeared in connection to my Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act, which the Senate judiciary committee had advanced just one week before ... that bill would update judicial ethics laws to ensure the supreme court complies with ethical standards at least as demanding as in other branches of government."

Like most attempts to rein in the supreme court, including calls for justices to resign or be impeached and removed, Whitehouse's bill has little chance of succeeding, given Republican opposition.

Whitehouse said he was bringing the complaint as the only senator who was part of the majorities on the judiciary and finance committees, both of which have tried to investigate supreme court ethics, arising from reporting about Alito and Thomas.

Roberts, however, has rejected calls to testify on the subject.

Whitehouse also said Alito, in his Wall Street Journal interview, "expressed an opinion on a matter that could well come before the court", something nominees to the court, including Alito, Thomas and other current conservative justices, have long said they will not and should not do.

Whitehouse contended that Alito was therefore in breach of the code of conduct for US federal judges, to which supreme court justices are notionally subject. In practice, however, supreme court justices in effect govern themselves, frustrating calls for Alito and Thomas to face action over links with figures potentially with political motives and/or business before the court.

Whitehouse said Alito had made matters worse by intruding into a specific matter.

"As the author of the bill in question and as a participant in the related investigations," Whitehouse wrote, "I feel acutely the targeting of this work by Justice Alito, and consider it more than just misguided or accidental general opining. It is directed to my work."

Whitehouse also pointed to links between David Rivkin, an attorney and one of Alito's interviewers in the Journal, and Leonard Leo, the rightwing mega-donor whose ties to Thomas and Alito - Leo was on the Alaska fishing trip with Paul Singer examined by ProPublica - have attracted widespread attention, particularly given Leo's role in tilting the court to the right.

Whitehouse continued: "The final unpleasant fact in this affair is that Justice Alito's opining, apparently at the behest of his friend and ally's lawyer, props up an argument being used to block inquiry into undisclosed gifts and travel received by Justice Alito.

"At the end, Justice Alito is the beneficiary of his own improper opining. This implicates [legal] strictures against improperly using one's office to further a personal interest: a justice obstructing a congressional investigation that implicates his own conduct."

In conclusion, Whitehouse told Roberts: "As you have repeatedly emphasised, the supreme court should not be helpless when it comes to policing its own members' ethical obligations.

"But it is necessarily helpless if there is no process of fair fact-finding, nor independent decision-making. I request that you as chief justice ... take whatever steps are necessary to investigate this affair and provide the public with prompt and trustworthy answers."

Leslie Levin, a law professor at the University of Connecticut, said the senator had "opened Pandora's box with little obvious upside ... we can expect a stream of complaints against all the supreme court justices".

In a statement to the Guardian, Kyle Herrig, senior adviser to the watchdog group Accountable.US, said Roberts "sat back and watched while the supreme court corruption crisis reached a fever pitch, causing public trust in his court to plummet" and "continues to dodge all responsibility".

"Thankfully, Senator Whitehouse recognises the urgency of the situation at hand. It's far past time for Chief Justice Roberts to clean up his court."

The supreme court did not immediately comment.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Senator files ethics complaint against supreme court justice Samuel Alito

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Sheldon Whitehouse writes to Chief Justice John Roberts about 'several' ethics violations, citing Wall Street Journal interview

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A conservative overhaul of public life: what the supreme court's term means for the US

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Summary of Roberts Court

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Another momentous term has ended at the US supreme court in which the rightwing supermajority crafted by Donald Trump has applied its blueprint for the radical overhaul of vast swathes of American public life to critical new areas, including race and LGBTQ+ rights.

In a repeat of the shockwaves of a year ago, when they overturned the right to an abortion, the six rightwing justices - three appointed by Trump - saved their biggest explosions til last. Thursday's 6 to 3 ruling barring affirmative action at Harvard and the University of North Carolina will affect virtually every selective higher education institution in the US, with potential ramifications far beyond.

On Friday, the last day of the term, the six conservatives wielded their sword over LGBTQ+ rights. In another 6 to 3 ruling, they slashed to the ground anti-discrimination protections to allow a devout Christian web designer to turn away same-sex couples.

The case, 303 Creative v Elenis, was instigated by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a rightwing Christian group that has been classed as an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Its legal arguments were based on questionable evidence.

The icing on the conservative cake, also delivered on Friday by a 6 to 3 margin, struck down the Biden administration's student debt forgiveness plan. Buried with it were the financial hopes of 40 million Americans.

The noise of the last couple of days comes at the end of a judicial term in which, in other respects, the chief justice John Roberts had made notable efforts to keep the court more attuned to rest of the nation. In rulings over voting rights and Native American protections he had steered a middle course, much to the relief of progressives who had been expecting the worst.

But it is the booming decisions on race, LGBTQ+ rights and student debt for which the 2022-23 term will most be remembered. The willingness of the six rightwing justices to stamp their mark on essential spheres of American life, shredding up to half a century of settled law in the process, confirmed the exceptional nature of the current bench.

Joe Biden put it pithily: "This is not a normal court."

Lia Epperson, a constitutional law professor at American University's Washington College of Law, said that a clear pattern was now emerging. "We see the court willing to go places it has not gone so quickly in the past, eviscerating precedent and disrupting social norms in ways that are so far reaching."

The decision to end race-conscious admissions puts an abrupt halt to 40 years of established practice in both public and private colleges. That is an echo of the Dobbs abortion ruling, in which the conservative supermajority tore up Roe v Wade, which had stood as the law of the land for 50 years.

A majority of Americans support Biden's student loan forgiveness plan. Photograph: Shutterstock

The court's most seismic decisions not only discarded long-held precedent, they also swam against the tide of public opinion. The five men and one woman who compose the Trump-created supermajority - unelected and appointed for life - are dramatically impacting the lives of millions of Americans in what amounts to minority rule:

The right to an abortion is supported by 61% of Americans;

The court's block on Biden's student loan forgiveness plan goes against the views of 62%;

The decision to tear down affirmative action flies in the face of 63% of Americans who want the practice to continue;

Seventy-one per cent think same-sex marriages should be recognized by law and entitled to the same rights as traditional marriages.

"The court system has become so independent of American public opinion and desires - and certainly our understanding of the constitution - that it risks damaging democracy in a significant way," said Caroline Fredrickson, a law professor at Georgetown University.

So fierce has been the supermajority's assault on American values and norms that it is certain further to embolden calls for a reboot. Anger towards the court is on the rise, and confidence in it at an historic low.

The recent spate of ethics scandals have only aggravated the situation. All three of the conservative hardliners - Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and the Trump-appointed Neil Gorsuch - have fallen foul of ethics disputes.

The trio were exposed as having failed to disclose luxury travel, lavish gifts or financial interactions with billionaires or corporate interests. Uniquely though, they have the ability to turn a blind eye to the accusations - supreme court justices are the only judges in the country who are unbound by any ethics code.

The backlash is already gathering speed. Within hours of the affirmative action ruling, Hank Johnson, a Democratic congressman from Georgia, denounced it as the work of "Maga" justices, after Trump's Make America Great Again slogan.

Johnson is sponsoring a bill that would expand the court from nine to 13 justices as a means of loosening the hard right's grip on power. "Judicial activism must be met with passage of my legislation," he thundered.

Calls to the barricades such as Johnson's threaten the reputation and stability of the supreme court. The standing of one justice is especially imperiled: Chief Justice Roberts.

The court's shift sharply to the right has led observers to question whether Roberts has ceded leadership to his most extreme peer, Clarence Thomas. "Roberts has lost control of the supreme court," warned the New York Times opinion pages. "The Thomas court," proclaimed the anti-Trump conservative group, the Lincoln Project.

Headlines like these cannot please Roberts, a lawyer who cares about the public-facing aspect of his job. Roberts cut his judicial teeth in the political realm, as counsel in Ronald Reagan's justice department.

As a result of that exposure to the cut and thrust of political life, perhaps, he is sensitive to public opinion and shows a keenness to hold the people's trust. Those are sentiments that seem not to perturb his more headstrong colleagues.

"Roberts is more careful in suppressing his viewpoints when he recognizes that they will inflame those who want to reform the court; he plays a long game," Fredrickson said. "Thomas and Alito don't have that vision - they want immediate gratification, whereas the chief is satisfied with delayed gratification."

That distinction was on display in three important rulings issued earlier in June. In each, Roberts surprised observers by breaking up the monolithic 6 to 3 hard-right supermajority and forging new alliances.

In Haaland v Brackeen, Roberts forced Thomas and Alito back into the minority by orchestrating a 7 to 2 ruling that preserved the Indian Child Welfare Act. The decision was hailed by Native American groups as an existential victory upon which the survival of tribes depended.

Two major voting rights decisions, both written by Roberts himself, were also met with stupefaction. Progressive groups had been bracing themselves for further blows to democratic norms from a court that appeared hell-bent on undoing the gains of the civil rights movement.

Yet when they came down, Roberts's decisions were surprisingly humble, sticking closely to existing law. In Allen v Milligan, he and another Trump appointee Brett Kavanaugh joined the three liberal justices to find against Alabama in its attempt to draw congressional maps that blatantly discriminated against Black voters.

That ensured the continuation of Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Lyndon Johnson's landmark civil rights legislation that brought millions of African Americans into the democratic process. Part of the puzzle of the Milligan ruling was that it went against Roberts's own track record: over decades he had expressed an open antagonism towards Section 2 stretching all the way back to the early 1980s.

In the second voting rights case, Moore v Harper, Roberts yet again drew back from the nuclear option, forcing Thomas and Alito into the minority alongside Gorsuch. Had the hardliners prevailed, a crank reading of the constitution known as the "independent state legislature theory" would have given state legislatures virtually untrammeled power over elections free from judicial oversight from state courts.

Far-right Republican lawmakers would have been empowered to do their worst, ranging from extreme partisan gerrymandering all the way to a potentially supercharged assault on democracy in the 2024 presidential race that might have made the assault on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 look like a tea party.

Roberts assuaged those fears, resoundingly rejecting the theory.

The headline writers duly obliged. "John Roberts has wrested back control of the supreme court," Slate magazine pronounced on Tuesday.

Two days later came the storm.

The release of three devastating rulings, blasted out over the two final days of the term, will at least for now silence talk about Roberts's moderating influences. This is the chief justice, after all, who personally wrote two of them - affirmative action, and the block on student loan forgiveness - and who joined the third attacking LGBTQ+ rights.

Analysts point out that it was always a mistake to perceive Roberts as a moderating force or to underestimate the intensity of his conservative ambitions. A quick look back at the landmark rulings of the Roberts court settles that score:

Citizens United (2010), which Roberts joined opening the floodgates for corporate cash to enter politics;

Shelby County (2013), which he wrote punching a giant hole in the Voting Rights Act and prompting a resurgence of voter suppression;

Obergefell v Hodges (2015), which guaranteed the right to gay marriage and which Roberts opposed, issuing a strongly worded dissent;

And this week's affirmative action and LGBTQ+ rulings (2023), which respectively set back the fight for equal opportunities for minorities in education and opened the door to overt discrimination of protected groups.

That is quite the record.

"I remain very skeptical of chief justice Roberts's judicial temperament," Fredrickson said. "He is driven not by disagreement with his conservative peers, but by a different strategy: how to get to the same ends."

As the judicial term draws to a close, that may be the greatest take away: the Roberts court remains very much alive, just don't expect it to deliver too many more surprises.

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A conservative overhaul of public life: what the supreme court's term means for the US

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Despite early moderate rulings, this term will be remembered for booming decisions on race, LGBTQ+ rights and student debt

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Adrienne Vogt, Aditi Sangal and Matt Meyer, CNN

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Live updates: Supreme Court blocks Biden’s student loan forgiveness program

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The Supreme Court released key opinions Friday as it ends the current term, including on cases related to President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program and LGBTQ rights. Follow here for the latest live news updates.

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Supreme Court says Christian business owner can refuse to create same-sex marriage websites | CNN Politics

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The Supreme Court Friday ruled in favor of a Christian web designer in Colorado who refuses to create websites to celebrate same-sex weddings out of religious objections.

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Supreme Court guts affirmative action in college admissions | CNN Politics

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Conservative activism on SCOTUS

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Ariane de Vogue,Devan Cole,Tierney Sneed

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Supreme Court guts affirmative action in college admissions | CNN Politics

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The Supreme Court says colleges and universities can no longer take race into consideration as a specific basis for granting admission, a landmark decision overturning long-standing precedent that has benefited Black and Latino students in higher education.

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Supreme Court guts affirmative action in college admissions | CNN Politics

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Interpreting the constitution

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Ariane de Vogue,Devan Cole,Tierney Sneed

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Supreme Court guts affirmative action in college admissions | CNN Politics

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The Supreme Court says colleges and universities can no longer take race into consideration as a specific basis for granting admission, a landmark decision overturning long-standing precedent that has benefited Black and Latino students in higher education.

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Scotus on Elections and constitution

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Good morning.

The US supreme court shot down a fringe legal theory that observers said posed a considerable threat to democracy, ruling that state courts have the authority to weigh in on disputes over federal election rules.

"When state legislatures prescribe the rules concerning federal elections, they remain subject to the ordinary exercise of state judicial review," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. "Our precedents have long rejected the view that legislative action under the Elections Clause is purely federal in character, governed only by restraints found in the federal constitution."

The decision was 6-3, with Roberts writing the majority opinion. Conservative justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett also joined the court's three liberal justices, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson in the ruling.

The ruling is a blow to Republicans in North Carolina who had asked the court to embrace the so-called independent state legislature theory - the idea that the US constitution does not allow state courts to limit the power of state legislatures when it comes to federal elections. There was deep concern that embracing such an idea would upend US elections, essentially giving legislatures a blank check to write election laws without oversight from state courts. It would have been a massive win for Republicans, who control more state legislatures than Democrats do.

What does the court's decision mean? It means state courts can continue to weigh in on disputes over federal election rules. State courts have become increasingly popular forums for hearing those disputes, especially after the US supreme court said in 2019 that federal courts could not address partisan gerrymandering.

Donald Trump has sued E Jean Carroll for defamation, alleging she falsely accused him of rape after a jury in a civil trial found that he sexually abused her.

Trump's counterclaim against Carroll in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday cited Carroll's statements on CNN after the verdict, and comes after a jury's finding in May that he sexually abused and defamed Carroll, but the jury did not find that he raped her.

Trump is seeking a retraction as well as unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

The filing by Trump signals that his multifront legal fight with Carroll is unlikely to end soon as both sides trade accusations and denials in the press.

Carroll, a former Elle magazine advice columnist, amended the first of her two lawsuits against Trump and sought an additional $10m in damages in May, citing his denials during a CNN appearance the day after the verdict.

Ukraine: Death toll rises to ten following strike on pizza restaurant in Kramatorsk

Three children were among the dead after a Russian strike on a pizzeria in Kramatorsk, according to Ukraine's regional governor of Donetsk, who warned the figure may still rise.

The number of wounded has risen to more than 60 people.

Earlier Suspilne, the Ukraine state broadcaster, said: "Rescuers continue to clear the rubble, and have rescued seven people, the state emergency service reported. Dog handlers and psychologists also work on site."

Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian MP, has shared on social media what purports to be pictures of a baby "wounded by fragments of Russian missiles". He said: "Propagandists on Russian TV justify the actions of the army and claim that they hit a military facility. It looks like a small Ukrainian child is a military facility."

What else is happening? Ukraine's defence minister has raised the stakes before the next Nato summit, saying he expects a "guarantee" that his country will be invited to join the military alliance at the conclusion of the war with Russia, describing membership as non-negotiable.

In other news ...

The Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey is to stand trial today on charges of sexual assault against four men. He faces 12 charges of sexual assault, indecent assault and causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent between 2001 and 2013. Spacey has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Using chainsaws, heavy machinery and controlled burns, the Biden administration is trying to turn the tide on worsening wildfires in the US west through a multibillion-dollar cleanup of forests choked with dead trees and undergrowth, but efforts to clear wildfire fuel are falling short.

Kanye West has been accused of subjecting a former business partner and friend to antisemitic abuse. Alex Klein, a tech entrepreneur who worked with the rapper - who is now known as Ye - found himself on the receiving end of an angry, racist tirade when he decided to end the collaboration.

All South Koreans have instantly become a year or two younger, as the country ditched its traditional - and increasingly unpopular - system for counting someone's age and replaced it with the internationally accepted method. 86% of Koreans say they will adopt the international system in their everyday lives.

A body that was discovered in wilderness near Mount Baldy in California on Saturday was confirmed last night to be that of the missing British actor Julian Sands. The 65-year-old had been missing since January after going hiking in Mount Baldy area.

Stat of the day: Destruction of world's pristine rainforests soared by 10% in 2022 despite Cop26 pledge

An area the size of Switzerland was cleared from Earth's most pristine rainforests in 2022, despite promises by world leaders to halt their destruction, new figures show. From the Bolivian Amazon to Ghana, the equivalent of 11 football pitches of primary rainforest were destroyed every minute last year as the planet's most carbon-dense and biodiverse ecosystems were cleared for cattle ranching, agriculture and mining, with Indigenous forest communities forced from their land by extractive industries in some countries. The tropics lost 4.1m hectares of primary rainforest in 2022, an increase of about 10% from 2021, according to the figures. The report's authors warn that humans are destroying one of the most effective tools for mitigating global heating and halting biodiversity loss.

Don't miss this: 'She brings light' - Brittney Griner's triumphant return to the WNBA

When the US negotiated a prisoner swap to secure Brittney Griner's freedom last December from prison in Russia, she almost immediately announced her intention to return to the WNBA in 2023, signing a one-year deal with the Mercury. But nobody knew what to expect from Griner, who had spent almost a year under arduous physical and mental conditions. But, against all odds, Griner appears to be back to her normal self, on and off the court. In her first WNBA game in 579 days, Griner had 18 points, six rebounds and four blocks in a loss to the Los Angeles Sparks. In her first home game a couple of days later, she hit just the seventh three-pointer of her career, yelling "I'm back!" to the crowd of 14,000 cheering fans. "I appreciate everything a little more," Griner said about being back in the league.

Climate check: Saved by seaweed - nuns and Native women heal polluted New York waters using kelp

In the waters off the shores of Long Island, New York, a group of nuns and a collective of women from the Shinnecock, a local Indigenous tribe, have joined forces on a unique collaboration to start a kelp farm in the hopes of cleaning up the pollution in their shared backyard. These two groups are united by proximity and purpose. Together they are working to rescue Shinnecock Bay, on which both communities are situated: the sisters on a bucolic, sprawling 200-acre retreat center on the bay's west side, and the Shinnecock, a maritime tribe, on a 900-acre peninsula to the east. They hope the growing and planting of kelp will help eliminate the carbon and nitrogen that had been poisoning their waters. It might have once seemed like a long shot, but it's working.

Last Thing: A load of manure - man gets prison time for years-long cow dung scam

A California man is going to prison for running a cow dung-to-green energy scheme that authorities say was a load of manure. Ray Brewer, 66, of Porterville was sentenced Monday to six years and nine months in federal prison for a years-long scam that bilked investors out of $8.75m, according to a statement from the US attorney's office. Brewer ran a scheme from 2014 through 2019 in which he claimed to be building anaerobic digesters at dairies in California's Fresno, Kern, Kings and Tulare counties and in Idaho, prosecutors said. Anaerobic digesters "use micro-organisms to break down biodegradable material and turn it into methane" that can be sold and that also provide the producers with renewable energy credits for producing green energy, the statement said.

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Supreme court rules against fringe legal theory in key voting rights case | First Thing

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
North Carolina Republicans requested justices issue ruling following dispute over electoral maps. Plus, Brittney Griner's triumphant return to the WNBA

# data[].attributes.body
Scotus on US elections

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Good morning.

The US supreme court shot down a fringe legal theory that observers said posed a considerable threat to democracy, ruling that state courts have the authority to weigh in on disputes over federal election rules.

"When state legislatures prescribe the rules concerning federal elections, they remain subject to the ordinary exercise of state judicial review," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. "Our precedents have long rejected the view that legislative action under the Elections Clause is purely federal in character, governed only by restraints found in the federal constitution."

The decision was 6-3, with Roberts writing the majority opinion. Conservative justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett also joined the court's three liberal justices, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson in the ruling.

The ruling is a blow to Republicans in North Carolina who had asked the court to embrace the so-called independent state legislature theory - the idea that the US constitution does not allow state courts to limit the power of state legislatures when it comes to federal elections. There was deep concern that embracing such an idea would upend US elections, essentially giving legislatures a blank check to write election laws without oversight from state courts. It would have been a massive win for Republicans, who control more state legislatures than Democrats do.

What does the court's decision mean? It means state courts can continue to weigh in on disputes over federal election rules. State courts have become increasingly popular forums for hearing those disputes, especially after the US supreme court said in 2019 that federal courts could not address partisan gerrymandering.

Donald Trump has sued E Jean Carroll for defamation, alleging she falsely accused him of rape after a jury in a civil trial found that he sexually abused her.

Trump's counterclaim against Carroll in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday cited Carroll's statements on CNN after the verdict, and comes after a jury's finding in May that he sexually abused and defamed Carroll, but the jury did not find that he raped her.

Trump is seeking a retraction as well as unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

The filing by Trump signals that his multifront legal fight with Carroll is unlikely to end soon as both sides trade accusations and denials in the press.

Carroll, a former Elle magazine advice columnist, amended the first of her two lawsuits against Trump and sought an additional $10m in damages in May, citing his denials during a CNN appearance the day after the verdict.

Ukraine: Death toll rises to ten following strike on pizza restaurant in Kramatorsk

Three children were among the dead after a Russian strike on a pizzeria in Kramatorsk, according to Ukraine's regional governor of Donetsk, who warned the figure may still rise.

The number of wounded has risen to more than 60 people.

Earlier Suspilne, the Ukraine state broadcaster, said: "Rescuers continue to clear the rubble, and have rescued seven people, the state emergency service reported. Dog handlers and psychologists also work on site."

Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian MP, has shared on social media what purports to be pictures of a baby "wounded by fragments of Russian missiles". He said: "Propagandists on Russian TV justify the actions of the army and claim that they hit a military facility. It looks like a small Ukrainian child is a military facility."

What else is happening? Ukraine's defence minister has raised the stakes before the next Nato summit, saying he expects a "guarantee" that his country will be invited to join the military alliance at the conclusion of the war with Russia, describing membership as non-negotiable.

In other news ...

The Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey is to stand trial today on charges of sexual assault against four men. He faces 12 charges of sexual assault, indecent assault and causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent between 2001 and 2013. Spacey has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Using chainsaws, heavy machinery and controlled burns, the Biden administration is trying to turn the tide on worsening wildfires in the US west through a multibillion-dollar cleanup of forests choked with dead trees and undergrowth, but efforts to clear wildfire fuel are falling short.

Kanye West has been accused of subjecting a former business partner and friend to antisemitic abuse. Alex Klein, a tech entrepreneur who worked with the rapper - who is now known as Ye - found himself on the receiving end of an angry, racist tirade when he decided to end the collaboration.

All South Koreans have instantly become a year or two younger, as the country ditched its traditional - and increasingly unpopular - system for counting someone's age and replaced it with the internationally accepted method. 86% of Koreans say they will adopt the international system in their everyday lives.

A body that was discovered in wilderness near Mount Baldy in California on Saturday was confirmed last night to be that of the missing British actor Julian Sands. The 65-year-old had been missing since January after going hiking in Mount Baldy area.

Stat of the day: Destruction of world's pristine rainforests soared by 10% in 2022 despite Cop26 pledge

An area the size of Switzerland was cleared from Earth's most pristine rainforests in 2022, despite promises by world leaders to halt their destruction, new figures show. From the Bolivian Amazon to Ghana, the equivalent of 11 football pitches of primary rainforest were destroyed every minute last year as the planet's most carbon-dense and biodiverse ecosystems were cleared for cattle ranching, agriculture and mining, with Indigenous forest communities forced from their land by extractive industries in some countries. The tropics lost 4.1m hectares of primary rainforest in 2022, an increase of about 10% from 2021, according to the figures. The report's authors warn that humans are destroying one of the most effective tools for mitigating global heating and halting biodiversity loss.

Don't miss this: 'She brings light' - Brittney Griner's triumphant return to the WNBA

When the US negotiated a prisoner swap to secure Brittney Griner's freedom last December from prison in Russia, she almost immediately announced her intention to return to the WNBA in 2023, signing a one-year deal with the Mercury. But nobody knew what to expect from Griner, who had spent almost a year under arduous physical and mental conditions. But, against all odds, Griner appears to be back to her normal self, on and off the court. In her first WNBA game in 579 days, Griner had 18 points, six rebounds and four blocks in a loss to the Los Angeles Sparks. In her first home game a couple of days later, she hit just the seventh three-pointer of her career, yelling "I'm back!" to the crowd of 14,000 cheering fans. "I appreciate everything a little more," Griner said about being back in the league.

Climate check: Saved by seaweed - nuns and Native women heal polluted New York waters using kelp

In the waters off the shores of Long Island, New York, a group of nuns and a collective of women from the Shinnecock, a local Indigenous tribe, have joined forces on a unique collaboration to start a kelp farm in the hopes of cleaning up the pollution in their shared backyard. These two groups are united by proximity and purpose. Together they are working to rescue Shinnecock Bay, on which both communities are situated: the sisters on a bucolic, sprawling 200-acre retreat center on the bay's west side, and the Shinnecock, a maritime tribe, on a 900-acre peninsula to the east. They hope the growing and planting of kelp will help eliminate the carbon and nitrogen that had been poisoning their waters. It might have once seemed like a long shot, but it's working.

Last Thing: A load of manure - man gets prison time for years-long cow dung scam

A California man is going to prison for running a cow dung-to-green energy scheme that authorities say was a load of manure. Ray Brewer, 66, of Porterville was sentenced Monday to six years and nine months in federal prison for a years-long scam that bilked investors out of $8.75m, according to a statement from the US attorney's office. Brewer ran a scheme from 2014 through 2019 in which he claimed to be building anaerobic digesters at dairies in California's Fresno, Kern, Kings and Tulare counties and in Idaho, prosecutors said. Anaerobic digesters "use micro-organisms to break down biodegradable material and turn it into methane" that can be sold and that also provide the producers with renewable energy credits for producing green energy, the statement said.

Sign up

First Thing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If you're not already signed up, subscribe now.

Get in touch

If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email newsletters@theguardian.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Supreme court rules against fringe legal theory in key voting rights case | First Thing

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
North Carolina Republicans requested justices issue ruling following dispute over electoral maps. Plus, Brittney Griner's triumphant return to the WNBA

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

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Biden's campaign

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

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The oldest president in US history is ditching his Covid-imposed ‘basement strategy’ for the most gruelling campaign of his life

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Biden vetoes legislation rolling back EPA emissions standards | CNN Politics

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Veto power

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Biden vetoes legislation rolling back EPA emissions standards | CNN Politics

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President Joe Biden on Wednesday vetoed SJ Res. 11, a Republican-backed bill that would've rolled back a 2022 EPA rule that set stronger vehicle emissions standards to reduce air pollution set to take effect in model year 2027.

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Biden vetoes legislation rolling back EPA emissions standards | CNN Politics

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Checks and balances - veto

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Biden vetoes legislation rolling back EPA emissions standards | CNN Politics

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President Joe Biden on Wednesday vetoed SJ Res. 11, a Republican-backed bill that would've rolled back a 2022 EPA rule that set stronger vehicle emissions standards to reduce air pollution set to take effect in model year 2027.

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Scotus decisions season

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Republican hardliners' revolt against Kevin McCarthy shuts down US House of Representatives

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GOP factions

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The US House of Representatives has been forced to postpone all votes until next week - paralyzed by a revolt against its Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, by ultra-conservative members of his own party.

The standoff between McCarthy and a hardline faction of his own Republican majority has forced the chamber into a holding pattern that looks likely to persist until at least Monday.

Members of the House Freedom Caucus have been upset over the bipartisan debt ceiling bill that McCarthy recently brokered with the Democratic president, Joe Biden, as well as claims that some hardliners had been threatened over their opposition to the deal.

"You've got a small group of people who are pissed off that are keeping the House of Representatives from functioning," said Republican representative Steve Womack.

"This is insane. This is not the way a governing majority is expected to behave, and frankly, I think there will be a political cost to it."

The hardliners were among the 71 Republicans who opposed debt ceiling legislation that passed the House last week. They say McCarthy did not cut spending deeply enough and retaliated against at least one of their members. McCarthy and other House Republican leaders dismissed the retaliation claims.

They also accuse McCarthy of violating the terms of an agreement that allowed him to secure the speaker's gavel in January, though it was not clear which aspects they believe were not honored.

House action came to a sudden halt midday on Tuesday when the band of conservatives refused to support a routine procedural vote to set the rules schedule for the day's debate. It was the first time in some 20 years a routine rules vote was defeated.

Days of closed-door negotiations have not yielded a resolution, but McCarthy said he was confident they would sort out their differences. "We're going to come back on Monday, work through it and be back up for the American public."

McCarthy oversees a narrow House Republican majority of 222-213, meaning that he can lose only four votes from his own party on any measure that faces uniform opposition from Democrats.

Along with an attempt by Republicans to pass a bill preventing the banning of gas stoves, the dispute also has delayed bills that would increase congressional scrutiny of regulations and expand the scope of judicial review of federal agencies.

As a result of the revolt against McCarthy, routine votes could not be taken, and the pair of pro-gas stove bills important to GOP activists stalled out. Some lawmakers asked if they could simply go home.

McCarthy brushed off the disruption as healthy political debate, part of his "risk taker" way of being a leader - not too different, he said, from the 15-vote spectacle it took in January for him to finally convince his colleagues to elect him as speaker. With a paper-thin GOP majority, any few Republicans have outsized sway.

But the aftermath of the debt ceiling deal is coming into focus. The McCarthy-Biden compromise set overall federal budget caps - holding spending flat for 2024, and with a 1% growth for 2025 - and Congress still needs to pass appropriations bills to fund the various federal agencies at the agreed-to amounts. That is typically done by 1 October. After Biden signed the debt deal into law last weekend, lawmakers have been fast at work on the agency-spending bills ahead of votes this summer to meet the deadline.

Not only did the conservatives object to the deal with Biden as insufficient, they claim it violated the terms of an agreement they had reached with McCarthy to roll back spending even further, to 2022 levels, to make him speaker.

"There was an agreement in January," Ken Buck, a Republican representative from Colorado, told reporters after he left the speaker's office on Wednesday morning. "And it was violated in the debt-ceiling bill."

If Congress fails to pass the spending bills by fall it risks a federal government shutdown - an outcome conservatives have forced multiple times before, starting in the Clinton era when then-Speaker Newt Gingrich led the House into a budget standoff, and again in 2013 when conservatives shut down the government as they tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

The longest federal shutdown in history was during the Trump era when Congress refused his demands for money to build the border wall between the US and Mexico.
With Reuters and the Associated Press

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Republican hardliners' revolt against Kevin McCarthy shuts down US House of Representatives

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The US House of Representatives has been forced to postpone all votes until next week - paralyzed by a revolt against its Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, by ultra-conservative members of his own party. The standoff between McCarthy and a hardline faction of his own Republican majority has forced the chamber into a holding pattern that looks likely to persist until at least Monday.

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US House passes bill to raise debt ceiling just days before default

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Rare bipartisanship

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US House passes bill to raise debt ceiling just days before default

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With 149 Republicans and 165 Democrats supporting the measure, Biden has called on the Senate to quickly take up the legislation

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US supreme court end-of-term decisions could transform key areas of public life

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Decision time for scotus

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The US supreme court is gearing itself up for the final nail-biting month of its 2022-3 term in which it will deliver decisions that could transform critical areas of public life, from affirmative action in colleges to voting rights, LGBTQ+ equality and the future of Native American tribes.

As the court enters the traditional June climax to its judicial year, it is already being battered by ethics scandals and plummeting public confidence. Yet over the next four weeks the six rightwing justices who command a supermajority on the nine-seat bench are still expected to push at the limits of constitutional law in the pursuit of their ideological goals.

For the first time since the pandemic struck in 2020 the justices, dressed in their customary black robes, will appear in person to read out the opinions - as well as potentially some blistering dissents from the three liberal members.

It will be a stark contrast from last year, when the pillared chamber was empty amid Covid measures while the building was entirely walled off with security fences as a defense against protesters.

Those metal barriers were a visible indication of how polarizing the nation's highest court had become, with the devastating leak of the draft ruling in Dobbs v Jackson followed in June by the ruling itself which abolished the right to an abortion. Twelve months later, the dust from that eruption has barely settled over the court as the country finds itself bracing once again for another epic month of seismic judicial interventions.

Seasoned observers of the court have been taken aback by how determined the rightwing justices appear to crack on with their radical agenda. The pattern in previous courts has been for historic years to be followed by a period of relative calm before the next jolt strikes.

Yet for the second year running, the new six-to-three rightwing supermajority - forged by Donald Trump with his appointments of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett - appears to be preparing for another volcanic June.

"I'm surprised that the supreme court is doing so much so quickly - in the past there have been institutionalists at the court who have put the brakes on," said Tara Grove, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Top of the pile of decisions being awaited with bated breath relates to the pair of challenges to the race-conscious admissions policies of Harvard and the University of North Carolina. Should the supermajority strike down affirmative action it would overturn 50 years of established practice - a chilling echo of its evisceration of half a century of settled law on abortion.

Demonstrators rally in support of abortion rights at the US supreme court in Washington DC on 15 April 2023. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

The challenges were brought by the conservative group Students for Fair Admissions, which says it wants to restore "color-blind principles" in how student bodies are chosen. Past affirmative action challenges have tended to focus on state universities and colleges, but this time private ones are also under the spotlight.

In this case, Harvard, a private university, has been challenged under the remit of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which outlaws employment discrimination based on race and other factors.

"All institutions that receive federal funding - and that's all of them - are implicated," Grove said. "So the supreme court ruling could obliterate the consideration of race in admissions for every single higher education institution in the country."

The six conservative justices will drop their affirmative action bombshell at a time when the supreme court is already struggling to hold on to public trust. The court has been battered recently by ethics scandals over Clarence Thomas's acceptance of luxury holidays from a billionaire real estate developer and Gorsuch's sale of a property to the head of a law firm that has business before the court.

Even before those stories broke, surveys show that confidence in the justices was falling sharply.

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Despite the court's shaky hold on public opinion, the conservatives show no sign of letting up. A taste of what may be to come was given last week when, for the second time in a year, the rightwing justices delivered a blow to the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to combat pollution.

The two rulings restricting the EPA's authority, taken together, prompted the liberal justice Elena Kagan to remark caustically that the majority had appointed itself "the national decision maker on environmental policy".

The supermajority could similarly appoint itself decision maker over race in voting and equality for LGBTQ+ and Native American communities, all of which await decisions in June. In Allen v Milligan, the court appears poised to destroy one of the last critical vestiges of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a crown jewel of the civil rights movement.

The case emerges from Alabama, the southern state where electoral maps are drawn in such a way that Black political representation is stymied and where no Black candidate has ever been sent to Congress from a majority-white district. Should the court side with Alabama, it would in effect be sweeping away protections against racial discrimination in elections and legalizing racial gerrymandering.

Other bone-jarring decisions could come in cases dealing with the right to equal treatment for same-sex couples and how children are handled in Native American families. The court will rule on whether the Colorado graphic design firm 303 Creative can withhold services on religious grounds from gay couples wanting to post wedding websites.

Brackeen v Haaland reviews whether Native American children can be forcibly removed from their families by child welfare agencies and placed in non-Native homes. That practice has a long, dark history in the US of being used to sap the strength of tribes.

In any other court, Moore v Harper would stand out as a blockbuster, though this June it seems just one among many such cases. It will test the debunked "independent state legislature theory" that has become a rallying cry for radical Republicans who believe that it gives state lawmakers almost total control over electoral maps and administration - including in federal elections.

The highest court of North Carolina, where the case originates, recently reversed its earlier decision on redistricting, which could render the supreme court's consideration of the case moot. Whatever the justices decide to do will be very closely watched by jurists and politicians alike, as it could have profound implications for the workings of US democracy, including next year's presidential race.

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US supreme court end-of-term decisions could transform key areas of public life

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The US supreme court is gearing itself up for the final nail-biting month of its 2022-3 term in which it will deliver decisions that could transform critical areas of public life, from affirmative action in colleges to voting rights, LGBTQ+ equality and the future of Native American tribes.

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Why is US gun lobby NRA so controversial?

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US gun control: What is the NRA and why is it so powerful?

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The National Rifle Association plays a central role in the contentious issue of US gun control.

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Harvard professor lobbied SEC on behalf of oil firm that pays her lavishly, emails show

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Money and lobbying

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The Harvard environmental law professor at the centre of a conflict-of-interest row lobbied the regulator on behalf of the oil and gas company that pays her more than $350,000 a year, a new investigation can reveal.

Emails seen by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) show that Jody Freeman facilitated a meeting between a director at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and ConocoPhillips, one of the world's worst polluters that is pushing to weaken forthcoming climate regulations. The company's Willow drilling project in Alaska was recently approved by the Biden administration, despite scientists warning it will be catastrophic for global heating.

Freeman, who has served on the ConocoPhillips board since 2012, vouched for two of the fossil-fuel company's executives in emails in 2021, which she signed off as a Harvard law professor. Failing to disclose her position at the company appears to breach university policy.

Freeman told the Guardian that she requested the meeting on behalf of a Harvard colleague, another law professor who was also an SEC director at the time, and that her intervention did not violate conflict-of-interest rules. She insisted her role as director of the oil and gas company was "common knowledge".

But disclosure of the emails have triggered fresh calls for Freeman to cut ties with ConocoPhillips amid mounting anger at the corrupting influence of the fossil-fuel industry on US university campuses.

Nathan Phillips, professor of earth and environment at Boston University, said he was "shocked but not surprised" by the revelations, and called for Freeman to resign immediately from the ConocoPhillips board - or at least by Harvard's high-profile climate week of action beginning on 8 May.

"We get conditioned by the circles we move in. I hope [exposing] this conflict can wake Prof Freeman out of the fog of capture and help them to regain their bearing," Phillips said.

The revelations come days after the Guardian reported that Freeman won a prestigious grant to research corporate climate pledges, which led to colleagues and students raising questions about the reputational damage and conflict of interest posed by her fossil-fuel ties.

Kyla Bennett, director of science policy with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer), whose work with whistleblowers has exposed industry's influence with regulators, Congress, academia and the media, said: "Our current ecological predicament means we can no longer afford to let things like this slide.

"History shows us that the tobacco, gun, chemical and fossil fuel industry will greenwash and lie and distort solely to make more money. They are merchants of doubt, pushing science denial and buying scientists, lawyers, and college professors to achieve their goals. We cannot waste time trying to change industry from the inside."

Freeman is a respected name in environmental law and sustainability, serving as an adviser on energy and climate change in the Obama White House and the Biden administration's climate action plan. She founded Harvard's environmental and energy law program, and is currently co-chair of the elite institution's sustainability committee.

Her Harvard biography states that "Freeman is an independent director on the board of directors of ConocoPhillips, where she is an important advisor on climate change and the energy transition". It does not state that as a paid board member, Freeman has a responsibility to act in the financial interest of ConocoPhillips. (Freeman is compensated for her role as company director in salary and stocks.)

Freeman's emails to the SEC, sent in 2021 and obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, were sent after the regulator announced proposals to require companies to publish greenhouse-gas emissions.

The emails show that she set up a meeting where ConocoPhillips executives could present their position in private before the regulator publicly requested input from investors and companies.

In an email to the acting director at the SEC, Freeman praised Dominic Macklon, a ConocoPhillips executive, and Lloyd Visser, head of sustainability: "I can tell you from personal experience that these are the right people to help with this exercise ... They are hugely knowledgeable, thoughtful, and interested in solving problems - I can promise that you will get high value from this engagement."

She added: "ConocoPhillips is widely recognized as the oil and gas industry leader on climate related disclosure ... Lloyd himself is highly influential on these issues ... and both he and Dominic - as the senior executive in the company with responsibility for this brief - are intimately aware of the financial sector's interest in these issues."

ConocoPhillips' Willow drilling project in Alaska was recently approved by the Biden administration. Photograph: AP

But Freeman's emails to the SEC then director do not disclose her affiliation with the oil and gas giant. This omission appears to violate Harvard policy that states: "Faculty members must make public disclosures of financial interests in related outside entities ... when reasonable members of the audience would give weight to those interests in assessing the opinions, advice, or work they are presenting."

In the emails, Freeman also said that Visser chaired the climate committee at the American Petroleum Institute (API), an influential fossil-fuel lobby group whose mission is to "influence public policy in support of a strong, viable US oil and natural gas industry".

Having proposed an initial meeting with the SEC that she would attend herself, Freeman added that "a couple of briefings would be well worth the time".

In a statement, Freeman said that she made the request on behalf of John Coates, a Harvard law and economics professor and then director of finance at the SEC, who asked her for contacts as he was aware of her role as director at ConocoPhillips. In an email, Coates supported her account.

Freeman added: "I am compliant with the university's conflict of interest rules, and I disclose my board work prominently in my bio, my webpage, with media, and in my classes ... Moving the world to a low-carbon future as fast as possible and forcefully addressing the enormous challenges posed by climate change is my core motivation for all my work. My role as an independent director on the board of ConocoPhillips is about helping advance the transition to a low-carbon economy."

The company did not respond to requests for comment, but SEC filings suggest Freeman is viewed as an asset. "Ms Freeman's expertise in environmental and energy law and policy and her unique experiences in shaping federal environmental and energy policy, especially in matters critical to ConocoPhillips' operations, enable her to provide valuable insight into our policies and practices."

The SEC put forward its proposed climate disclosure rules last year, which included requirements for companies to publish their direct and indirect emissions, and the risk posed to their business by the climate emergency. Oil and gas companies have reportedly stepped up lobbying efforts in an attempt to dilute the proposed rules, though most investors are in favour, an analysis by Harvard Law School found.

ConocoPhillips has since sent its official response to the SEC, opposing the disclosure rules - which are expected to be finalised in the coming months, more than two years after they were first proposed. The firm's Willow project in Alaska is an environmentally destructive decades-long drilling venture that will release millions of additional tons of planet-warming emissions into the atmosphere.

"Despite a well-honed PR effort and polished climate pledges, ConocoPhillips is lobbying behind the scenes to gut the SEC's climate disclosure rule. It undermines Harvard's climate ambitions if a faculty sustainability leader is using the university's prestige to run cover for an oil company's greenwashing efforts," said Kelly Mitchell, senior oil and gas analyst at Documented, an accountability watchdog.

The emails also raise awkward questions for Harvard.

Harvard received $21m from the fossil-fuel industry between 2010 and 2020, according to Data for Progress, among the highest of American elite academic institutions.

But amid growing pressure from students and staff to divest from fossil fuels, the Ivy League school promised not to use its $39bn endowment to make any new direct investments in companies that explore or further develop fossil fuel reserves, and pledged to be "fossil fuel-free by 2050 and fossil fuel-neutral by 2026".

Its new Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability goes even further, stating that it "will not accept funds from, or partner with, any company that does not share the goal of moving our global economy away from fossil fuels".

Yet the Salata Institute awarded Freeman a grant to research corporate net-zero pledges - which some environmentalists have condemned as greenwashing - despite her financial and fiduciary ties to ConocoPhillips.

"Giving her leadership roles at Harvard while allowing her to remain on ConocoPhillips' corporate board raises serious doubts about Harvard's commitment to fossil fuel independence," said Carolyn Becker, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an outspoken critic of conflicts of interest.

Becker also called on Freeman to resign from the oil company, arguing that her fiduciary obligation to advocate in favor of shareholders, growth, and profits was incompatible with her roles as a "credible, respected, and unbiased climate leader and researcher at Harvard".

Last week, student campaign group Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard wrote an open letter to Freeman urging her to resign from ConocoPhillips. "Choose your commitments to the climate over your commitments to an industry whose influence on academia and on the world has been nothing but toxic."

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Harvard professor lobbied SEC on behalf of oil firm that pays her lavishly, emails show

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The Harvard environmental law professor at the centre of a conflict-of-interest row lobbied the regulator on behalf of the oil and gas company that pays her more than $350,000 a year, a new investigation can reveal.

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Biden vetoes Republican effort to overturn socially conscious retirement rule

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Biden uses his veto

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Joe Biden issued the first veto of his presidency on Monday, rejecting legislation to overturn a labor department rule related to an investment strategy for Americans' retirement plans that Republicans have derided as "woke capitalism".

"The legislation passed by the Congress would put at risk the retirement savings of individuals across the country. They couldn't take into consideration investments that would be impacted by climate, impacted by overpaying executives," Biden said in an Oval Office video released by the White House. "And that's why I decided to veto it."

Republicans have railed against so-called "ESG" investing, an acronym that stands for "environmental, social and governance", arguing that it prioritizes allocating money based on liberal political causes, such as efforts to combat climate change and divest from fossil fuels, instead of earning the best returns for retirement accounts.

"In his first veto, Biden just sided with woke Wall Street over workers. Tells you exactly where his priorities lie," the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, wrote in response. "Now - despite a bipartisan vote to block his ESG agenda - it's clear Biden wants Wall Street to use your retirement savings to fund his far-left political causes."

Their willingness to challenge corporate America, long seen as a reliable Republican ally, is just one front in the right's "war on wokeness" that they claim has affected schools, companies and government.

The veto underscores Biden's new, more confrontational relationship with Republicans in Congress after two years of working with Democratic majorities. Now the White House is readying for even more consequential battles in the months ahead over government spending and the nation's debt limit. House Republicans, in turn, are using their control of the chamber to advance legislation they intend to use against Democrats in next year's election.

The White House has argued that the legislation would have made it illegal for pension fund managers to consider "risk factors Maga House Republicans don't like" such as the climate crisis when making investment decisions.

"Your plan manager should be able to protect your hard-earned savings - whether Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene likes it or not," Biden said in a tweet, referring to the far-right Georgia congresswoman who has made opposition to progressive ideas her political brand.

House Republicans advanced the bill after taking control of the chamber this year. And earlier this month, two Democratic senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana, voted with Republicans, sending the measure to Biden's desk. Tester is running for re-election next year in states Donald Trump won handily.

In a statement, Manchin called it "absolutely infuriating" that Biden had chosen to "put his administration's progressive agenda above the wellbeing of the American people". The coal country Democrat said the rule threatened the nation's economic security as Americans contend with high inflation and Russia's war in Ukraine upends energy markets.

The veto, which was expected, sends the legislation back to Congress. House Republicans have scheduled a vote on Thursday in an attempt to override the veto, though to succeed would require support from at least two-thirds of each chamber, which appears unlikely.

Biden's veto in effect preserves the status quo, allowing - but not requiring - retirement fund managers to consider environmental, social and corporate governance factors when making investment decisions. The rule ​reversed restrictions imposed by the Trump administration that ​made it harder for ​​retirement fund managers to consider such factors.

Though ESG is often framed as a socially conscious way of investing, proponents say weighing a company's working conditions​, pending lawsuits​ or its environmental record can help uncover more stable and​ crucially, they argue,​ more profitable savings opportunities. ​The popular investment strategy has become a target of conservatives, with several Republican-led state legislatures passing or proposing legislation that would limit or ban their state governments from considering social or environmental impacts when making investment choices.

In a formal statement notifying Congress of his veto, Biden said that the labor department rule allowed "retirement plan fiduciaries to make fully informed investment decisions by considering all relevant factors that might impact a prospective investment". By refusing to allow these considerations, Biden said, Republicans were "disregarding the principles of free markets and jeopardizing the life savings of working families and retirees".

Following his initial veto, Biden on Monday signed into law a Republican-led resolution overruling an effort by the District of Columbia to overhaul its criminal code.

The president's support for the measure had angered many Democrats, who expected him to veto it out of respect for the federal district's right to self-governance. But for Biden, who is expected to formally announce his intention to seek re-election in the coming weeks, the move underscores the pressure he and his party are facing from Republicans who have sought to make rising violent crime rates a political liability.

Biden also signed into law a measure requiring the administration to declassify intelligence related to the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, which was passed by Congress without any opposition in either chamber. Since taking over the House this year, Republicans have revived the polarizing debate over how Covid-19 emerged, with a series of hearings into the matter.

Recently, the Department of Energy and the FBI indicated support for the theory that the virus leaked from a laboratory in China, though they did not release any evidence supporting their assessment. Many leading scientists and researchers believe the virus was most likely transmitted from animals to humans.

In a statement, Biden said he shared Congress's goal of understanding the origins of a virus that has killed more than 1 million Americans.

"We need to get to the bottom of Covid-19's origins to help ensure we can better prevent future pandemics," he said in a statement.

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Biden vetoes Republican effort to overturn socially conscious retirement rule

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Joe Biden issued the first veto of his presidency on Monday, rejecting legislation to overturn a labor department rule related to an investment strategy for Americans' retirement plans that Republicans have derided as "woke capitalism". "The legislation passed by the Congress would put at risk the retirement savings of individuals across the country.

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US court rules Uber and Lyft workers are contractors

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Labour groups had opposed contractor status, saying it robbed them of rights like sick leave.

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Biden to visit Selma on 'Bloody Sunday' anniversary to highlight voting rights

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US civil rights still a struggle?

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President Joe Biden is set to pay tribute to the heroes of "Bloody Sunday", joining thousands for the annual commemoration of the seminal moment in the civil rights movement that led to passage of landmark voting rights legislation nearly 60 years ago.

The visit to Selma, Alabama, on Sunday also presents Biden with the opportunity to speak directly to the current generation of civil rights activists. Many feel dejected because Biden has been unable to make good on a campaign pledge to bolster voting rights and are eager to see his administration keep the issue in the spotlight.

Biden intends to use his remarks to underscore the importance of commemorating Bloody Sunday so that history can't be erased, while making the case that the fight for voting rights remains integral to delivering economic justice and civil rights for Black Americans, according to White House officials.

This year's commemoration also comes as the historic city of roughly 18,000 is still digging out from the aftermath of a January EF-2 tornado that destroyed or damaged thousands of properties in and around Selma.

Ahead of Biden's visit, the Rev William Barber II, a co-chair of Poor People's Campaign, along with six other activists wrote to Biden and members of Congress to express their frustration with the lack of progress on voting rights legislation.

They also urged Washington politicians visiting Selma this weekend not to sully the memories of the late civil rights activists John Lewis, Hosea Williams and others with empty platitudes.

Few moments have had as lasting importance to the civil rights movement as what happened on March 7, 1965, in Selma and in the weeks that followed.

Some 600 peaceful demonstrators led by Lewis and Williams had gathered that day, just weeks after the fatal shooting of a young Black man, Jimmie Lee Jackson, by an Alabama trooper.

Lewis, who would later serve in the US House representing Georgia, and the others were brutally beaten by Alabama troopers and sheriff's deputies as they tried to cross Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge at the start of what was supposed to be a 54-mile walk to the state capital in Montgomery, part of a larger effort to register Black voters in the South

The images of the police violence sparked outrage across the country. Days later, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr led what became known as the "Turnaround Tuesday" march, in which marchers approached a wall of police at the bridge and prayed before turning back.

President Lyndon B Johnson introduced the Voting Rights Act of 1965 eight days after Bloody Sunday, calling Selma one of those rare moments in American history where "history and fate meet at a single time".

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Biden to visit Selma on 'Bloody Sunday' anniversary to highlight voting rights

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President Joe Biden is set to pay tribute to the heroes of "Bloody Sunday", joining thousands for the annual commemoration of the seminal moment in the civil rights movement that led to passage of landmark voting rights legislation nearly 60 years ago.

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Republican senator Tim Scott preparing presidential run - report

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Another GOP candidate? References superpac 

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Another GOP candidate? References superpac 

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South Carolina senator Tim Scott is reportedly taking steps to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

Reporting the news, the Wall Street Journal cited anonymous sources "familiar with his plans". Jennifer DeCasper, a senior adviser, said the senator was "excited to share his vision of hope and opportunity and hear the American people's response".

A stringent conservative but also the only Black Republican in the US Senate, Scott, 57, has worked publicly if unsuccessfully with Democrats on attempts to agree to policing reform.

Last August, he appeared to confirm his ambition for a presidential run.

His book, America: a Redemption Story, contained small print including a description of "a rising star who sees and understands the importance of bipartisanship to move America forward" and saying "this book is a political memoir that includes his core messages as he prepares to make a presidential bid in 2022".

Scott's publisher, Thomas Nelson, apologised for what it called an "error ... not done at the direction or approval of the senator or his team".

Concrete steps made by Scott have included appointing co-chairs of a fundraising Super Pac and plans to speak in South Carolina and Iowa, two early voting states.

The report about Scott's plans came two days ahead of an expected campaign launch by another South Carolina Republican, Nikki Haley, a former governor who was US ambassador to the United Nations under Donald Trump.

Still the only declared candidate for the 2024 nomination, Trump spoke in New Hampshire and South Carolina last month. He has already secured support from the other South Carolina senator, Lindsey Graham, the governor, Henry McMaster, and US House members.

The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is Trump's only serious challenger in polling concerning the notional field, in which Scott generally scores 1% or less. Last week, a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed Haley performing better but splitting the anti-Trump vote, thereby handing victory to the former president in a putative three-way race.

Trump has begun to attack DeSantis but has not turned his fire on Haley, despite her preparing to renege on a vow not to run if he did.

Both Scott and Haley are often mentioned as potential vice-presidential picks, Haley representing youth and diversity (Haley is 51 and Indian American).

On Monday, John Barrasso of Wyoming, chair of the Republican Senate conference, told the Journal that Scott "truly believes that God is great and America is great and we are provided with incredible opportunities. So I think a Ronald Reagan 'Morning in America' hopeful America vision is one that Tim has, lives and breathes and is really needed in our country."

On the flip side, Ed Kilgore, a Democratic operative turned columnist, suggested Scott might actually have his eye on 2028.

Scott, Kilgore wrote for New York Magazine, might really be "engaging in a sort of starter presidential campaign in order to build contacts and positive name ID for a future run ... a respectable start, a signature moment or two, and a graceful exit from the 2024 contest may be the real goal".

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Republican senator Tim Scott preparing presidential run - report

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South Carolina senator Tim Scott is reportedly taking steps to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. Reporting the news, the Wall Street Journal cited anonymous sources "familiar with his plans". Jennifer DeCasper, a senior adviser, said the senator was "excited to share his vision of hope and opportunity and hear the American people's response".

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The former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley will announce her run for the Republican presidential nomination in her home state on 15 February, a local newspaper reported.

The Post and Courier said it had seen an invitation "soon going out to her backers", for a "special announcement" at The Shed at Charleston Visitor Center on 15 February.

"The confirmation she is entering the race came [on Tuesday] from a member of Haley's inner circle," it said.

Other outlets said they had confirmed the news.

If Haley, 51, does jump in, she will, if no one else moves sooner, become the second contender for the nomination - after Donald Trump.

The 76-year-old former president declared his candidacy in November, after disappointing midterm elections in which high-profile Trump-backed candidates suffered costly defeats.

Trump has begun to move his campaign into a higher gear, speaking in South Carolina and New Hampshire, early voting states, last week.

Trump has also attacked Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida who is Trump's only close rival in polling regarding the notional field.

Trump has reportedly returned disappointing fundraising figures but the realclearpolitics.com polling average makes him the clear leader on 46%, with DeSantis on 31%, former vice-president Mike Pence third on 6% and Haley fourth with 3% support.

Haley originally said she would not run if Trump did but in recent months she has not been shy about trailing her run and potential campaign staffers have reportedly been moving to South Carolina.

Last week, Haley told Fox News: "When you're looking at a run for president, you look at two things. You first look at does the current situation push for new leadership? The second question is, 'Am I that person that could be that new leader?'

"Yes, we need to go in a new direction. And can I be that leader? Yes. I think I can be that leader."

Haley also used that Fox News interview to go after Mike Pompeo, like her a Trump administration graduate - he was CIA director and secretary of state - thought to be preparing a presidential run.

Pompeo attacks Haley in his new memoir, accusing her of conniving with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner to become vice-president and writing unfavourably of her performance as UN ambassador and resignation as South Carolina governor.

"She has described her role as going toe-to-toe with tyrants," Pompeo writes of Haley's time at the UN. "If so, then why would she quit such an important job at such an important time?"

Haley resigned as UN ambassador (or "flat-out threw in the towel", Pompeo says) in October 2018. Pompeo says she thereby "abandoned" Trump just as she did "the great people of South Carolina" when in 2017 she resigned as governor.

Haley told Fox News she did not know why Pompeo was attacking her, "but that's exactly why I stayed out of DC as much as possible, to get away from the drama".

All the signs now suggest she is running to return to DC as president.

Most do not expect her to succeed. In a barbed remark after the Guardian first reported Pompeo's attacks, the former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes wrote: "Pompeo and Haley poised for a real battle to see who can crack 1% in a Republican primary."

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Nikki Haley to announce Republican presidential run in February - report

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The former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley will announce her run for the Republican presidential nomination in her home state on 15 February, a local newspaper reported. The Post and Courier said it had seen an invitation "soon going out to her backers", for a "special announcement" at The Shed at Charleston Visitor Center on 15 February.

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he Democratic party's rationale for shaking up its presidential primary process was fairly straightforward: the current system is dominated by two predominantly white states who vote first, giving people of color little say in choosing the potential next president.

Facing fuming New Hampshire officials, however, and a Georgia Republican party happy to meddle in Democrats' plans, the Joe Biden-led effort to make things more equitable now looks increasingly in peril.

New Hampshire, which has held the first presidential primary for decades, is proving itself particularly unyielding, raising the prospect of a rogue vote taking place in the state.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) approved a new primary schedule in December 2022, which would see the most significant changes to the way a potential president is selected in decades.

Under the new plan, Iowa - which holds its vote under a complex caucus system - and New Hampshire, the two states which have led off the voting since the modern day presidential nominating process began in the 1970s, would be nudged down the calendar - with Iowa in particular punted way down the schedule, following a shambolic counting process in 2020.

Instead, Democrats want South Carolina, a more racially diverse state than Iowa and New Hampshire, to have first say in whom the Democratic party should nominate for president. The proposal would see New Hampshire vote a week later, along with Nevada, while Georgia - another racially diverse state, and one which was crucial to Joe Biden's 2020 victory and Democrats' successful holding of the Senate in 2022 - would go next.

The plan hit a snag last week, however, when New Hampshire and Georgia asked for more time to meet the DNC's requirements. The committee said it remained hopeful the new calendar would take effect in 2024, and it plans a full vote on the schedule next month, but it is clear that officials in New Hampshire and Georgia have other ideas.

David Scanlan, who as New Hampshire's secretary of state is in charge of selecting the date of the primary, suggested he would move the vote forward anyway.

He told WMUR9: "I'm going to wait to set the date. There is a lot that can happen between now and next fall," Scanlan said.

"We have the luxury of just being patient and watching. We'll see how the landscape develops and then at the right time we will announce the date of our primary."

Part of the issue is that New Hampshire has a law that states that the New Hampshire primary should be held on the second Tuesday in March, or "on a date selected by the secretary of state which is seven days or more immediately preceding the date on which any other state shall hold a similar election".

Joe Biden speaks at a primary night election rally in Columbia, South Carolina, in February 2020. Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP

The date of the primary has been moved forward several times over the years to preserve New Hampshire's "first in the nation" status. In 2008, Michigan and Florida moved their primary dates forward, in defiance of the DNC's official calendar, and party bosses reacted by cutting the number of delegates assigned to each state. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton agreed not to campaign in either state, although the issue would become contentious when the DNC later decided to grant Michigan and Florida delegates after all.

But as well as being law, at least some of the furore is about a desire to cling on to the first-primary-in-the-nation status, said Dante Scala, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire.

"It's really much more about political culture, and it's about political elites really enjoying their moment in the spotlight," Scala said.

"They're exceedingly protective; they're exceedingly reluctant to give it up. They love the access that the primary brings in terms of access to candidates. Every party activist, Democratic or Republican, seemingly has a story to tell about their rubbing elbows with candidate X, or having a picture taken with such a person, all that sort of thing."

Democrats in New Hampshire have reacted angrily to the new plan. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, New Hampshire's Democratic senators, skipped an annual congressional ball at the White House in December in protest, while Raymond Buckley, the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic party, has described the plan as "unrealistic and unattainable".

In Georgia, the DNC faces a different problem. The state is led by Republicans, including Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who sets the primary date. Raffensberger has said he wants both primaries on the same day, and the Republican party has already said that its first four states will be in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

At the moment, the scheduling could be theoretical. Biden has indicated he will run in 2024, making it unlikely there would be a serious Democratic primary. But the party is also keen to shake up the schedule in 2028 and beyond - possibly with a different state order each election cycle - meaning New Hampshire's days of going first could be doomed either way.

Scala and Caitlin Jewitt, a political scientist at Virginia Tech university, said it was unlikely New Hampshire would back down, raising the prospect of an unwanted - by party leaders - first primary in 2024.

Should that happen, the Democratic party could ask candidates not to campaign in New Hampshire, and not put their names on the ballot in the state. That would require the candidates to agree, but with the Republican primary taking place early in the state - something which will bring thousands of members of the media and national attention - it could be hard to resist.

Jewitt said the DNC could also strip New Hampshire of its delegates, who cast votes for their chosen candidate at the party's pre-presidential convention, effectively rendering the primary redundant.

"That is supposed to be a punishment: you won't have as much influence on the outcome, but it has never been very effective to stage because New Hampshire's influence has never been that they have a large number of delegates and they can influence the outcome at the national convention.

"Their influence has always been the media attention and the candidate attention and having this first in the nation primary."

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Democratic plans to overhaul primary process hit a fresh snag

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
he Democratic party's rationale for shaking up its presidential primary process was fairly straightforward: the current system is dominated by two predominantly white states who vote first, giving people of color little say in choosing the potential next president.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
he Democratic party's rationale for shaking up its presidential primary process was fairly straightforward: the current system is dominated by two predominantly white states who vote first, giving people of color little say in choosing the potential next president.

Facing fuming New Hampshire officials, however, and a Georgia Republican party happy to meddle in Democrats' plans, the Joe Biden-led effort to make things more equitable now looks increasingly in peril.

New Hampshire, which has held the first presidential primary for decades, is proving itself particularly unyielding, raising the prospect of a rogue vote taking place in the state.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) approved a new primary schedule in December 2022, which would see the most significant changes to the way a potential president is selected in decades.

Under the new plan, Iowa - which holds its vote under a complex caucus system - and New Hampshire, the two states which have led off the voting since the modern day presidential nominating process began in the 1970s, would be nudged down the calendar - with Iowa in particular punted way down the schedule, following a shambolic counting process in 2020.

Instead, Democrats want South Carolina, a more racially diverse state than Iowa and New Hampshire, to have first say in whom the Democratic party should nominate for president. The proposal would see New Hampshire vote a week later, along with Nevada, while Georgia - another racially diverse state, and one which was crucial to Joe Biden's 2020 victory and Democrats' successful holding of the Senate in 2022 - would go next.

The plan hit a snag last week, however, when New Hampshire and Georgia asked for more time to meet the DNC's requirements. The committee said it remained hopeful the new calendar would take effect in 2024, and it plans a full vote on the schedule next month, but it is clear that officials in New Hampshire and Georgia have other ideas.

David Scanlan, who as New Hampshire's secretary of state is in charge of selecting the date of the primary, suggested he would move the vote forward anyway.

He told WMUR9: "I'm going to wait to set the date. There is a lot that can happen between now and next fall," Scanlan said.

"We have the luxury of just being patient and watching. We'll see how the landscape develops and then at the right time we will announce the date of our primary."

Part of the issue is that New Hampshire has a law that states that the New Hampshire primary should be held on the second Tuesday in March, or "on a date selected by the secretary of state which is seven days or more immediately preceding the date on which any other state shall hold a similar election".

Joe Biden speaks at a primary night election rally in Columbia, South Carolina, in February 2020. Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP

The date of the primary has been moved forward several times over the years to preserve New Hampshire's "first in the nation" status. In 2008, Michigan and Florida moved their primary dates forward, in defiance of the DNC's official calendar, and party bosses reacted by cutting the number of delegates assigned to each state. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton agreed not to campaign in either state, although the issue would become contentious when the DNC later decided to grant Michigan and Florida delegates after all.

But as well as being law, at least some of the furore is about a desire to cling on to the first-primary-in-the-nation status, said Dante Scala, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire.

"It's really much more about political culture, and it's about political elites really enjoying their moment in the spotlight," Scala said.

"They're exceedingly protective; they're exceedingly reluctant to give it up. They love the access that the primary brings in terms of access to candidates. Every party activist, Democratic or Republican, seemingly has a story to tell about their rubbing elbows with candidate X, or having a picture taken with such a person, all that sort of thing."

Democrats in New Hampshire have reacted angrily to the new plan. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, New Hampshire's Democratic senators, skipped an annual congressional ball at the White House in December in protest, while Raymond Buckley, the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic party, has described the plan as "unrealistic and unattainable".

In Georgia, the DNC faces a different problem. The state is led by Republicans, including Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who sets the primary date. Raffensberger has said he wants both primaries on the same day, and the Republican party has already said that its first four states will be in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

At the moment, the scheduling could be theoretical. Biden has indicated he will run in 2024, making it unlikely there would be a serious Democratic primary. But the party is also keen to shake up the schedule in 2028 and beyond - possibly with a different state order each election cycle - meaning New Hampshire's days of going first could be doomed either way.

Scala and Caitlin Jewitt, a political scientist at Virginia Tech university, said it was unlikely New Hampshire would back down, raising the prospect of an unwanted - by party leaders - first primary in 2024.

Should that happen, the Democratic party could ask candidates not to campaign in New Hampshire, and not put their names on the ballot in the state. That would require the candidates to agree, but with the Republican primary taking place early in the state - something which will bring thousands of members of the media and national attention - it could be hard to resist.

Jewitt said the DNC could also strip New Hampshire of its delegates, who cast votes for their chosen candidate at the party's pre-presidential convention, effectively rendering the primary redundant.

"That is supposed to be a punishment: you won't have as much influence on the outcome, but it has never been very effective to stage because New Hampshire's influence has never been that they have a large number of delegates and they can influence the outcome at the national convention.

"Their influence has always been the media attention and the candidate attention and having this first in the nation primary."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Democratic plans to overhaul primary process hit a fresh snag

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
he Democratic party's rationale for shaking up its presidential primary process was fairly straightforward: the current system is dominated by two predominantly white states who vote first, giving people of color little say in choosing the potential next president.

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What do these hardliners want? Here's what they've said | CNN Politics

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international relations and national security

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What do these hardliners want? Here's what they've said | CNN Politics

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It's a very small minority of a slim majority that's kept Congress from convening and is on the cusp of derailing Rep. Kevin McCarthy's bid to become House speaker. Here are some of the stated reasons and accepted motivations of why these lawmakers are unwilling to support McCarthy.

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US House in chaos after Kevin McCarthy loses speaker votes

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Division in the GOP

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On a day of political drama not seen in Congress for a century, Republican leader Kevin McCarthy repeatedly failed in his bid to be elected Speaker of the US House of Representatives. What happens now?

The start of a new Congress was supposed to be a victory lap for the Republican Party as it took control of the lower chamber following November's elections. Instead, Mr McCarthy faced a rebellion from within his own ranks and made history for all the wrong reasons.

The House adjourned without a speaker on Tuesday night - the first time since 1923 they had failed to choose a leader after a first round vote.

The California congressman has lost three consecutive votes for speaker so far, and it's unclear what his path to victory could be when the House returns on Wednesday to try all over again. They will keep voting until someone wins a majority.

And even if Mr McCarthy finds a way, analysts warn, the turmoil on the floor of the House foreshadows a tumultuous two years of moderate and right-wing Republicans at war with each other.

'Negotiations made him look weak'

Republicans narrowly won control of the House in November, so Mr McCarthy only had a few votes to spare in his bid to become speaker. That allowed a group of hardline conservatives to band together to oppose his nomination.

The rift was a long time coming, according to Republican observers.

"Kevin McCarthy has not made friends with certain segments of the caucus for a while, he's made a lot of enemies," said one Republican lobbyist, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about Tuesday's vote. "There's people who don't like him for political reasons, for personal reasons."

Mr McCarthy entered into negotiations with his detractors - who see him as too mainstream and power hungry - offering concessions to try to win their vote. At one point, he reportedly agreed to change the House rules to make it easier to oust a sitting speaker, handing his opponents an enormous check on his power.

"The fact he was negotiating with the Republicans at all made him look very, very weak to the point of being desperate," the Republican lobbyist said.

His opponents feel emboldened

The futility of that approach became clear on Tuesday.

In three consecutive votes, Mr McCarthy failed to reach the required 218 vote threshold. Though Republicans hold 222 seats, a bloc of 19 hard-right Republicans had solidified in opposition to him. They oppose Mr McCarthy on ideological and personal grounds, but also see an opportunity to exploit Republicans' narrow majority to force further concessions from him.

They would "never back down" Representative Rob Good, a Virginia Republican, told reporters on Tuesday.

In one of the day's most dramatic moments, they even nominated Representative Jim Jordan to challenge him, just moments after Mr Jordan himself nominated Mr McCarthy for speaker.

Even after Mr Jordan - who is a leading figure in the hard-right Freedom Caucus - urged Republicans to "rally around" Mr McCarthy in the third round of voting, 20 Republicans voted for Mr Jordan, again denying victory to Mr McCarthy.

Meanwhile, Democrats remained unified behind their party's new leader, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

A few could not help publicly teasing their Republican counterparts about their party's difficult afternoon. One congressman, Ruben Gallego of Arizona, tweeted that Democrats were "breaking the popcorn out," and as evidence included a photo of the snack.

What are McCarthy's options now?

Political observers in Washington have begun spinning out various theories about how this all could end. Their predictions to the BBC ranged from the feasible (Mr McCarthy holds out and wins, but walks away seriously weakened) to the entirely possible (he bows out and backs his second in command, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana). One suggestion verged on fantasy (five Republicans decide to vote for Mr Jeffries, a Democrat, and deliver him control of the House.)

As it stands, Mr McCarthy is "essentially hostage to one side of his party," said Ruth Bloch Rubin, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who studies partisanship.

Mr McCarthy has pledged not to make any more concessions, but may not have a choice. He could try to win over obstinate lawmakers with plum committee assignments or new leadership roles.

"He's got to give the people who are against him something to hang their hat on," said Aaron Cutler, a lobbyist who once worked for former congressman Eric Cantor, another politician whose bid to lead the House was derailed by hardline conservative opposition. The other Republican lobbyist, however, believed there was "no path to victory, at all, period."

Members will reconvene for a fourth time on Wednesday, though it's unclear if the stalemate will break.

"We haven't heard anything new from McCarthy," one of the conservative holdouts, Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, told reporters. "So I guess we'll just keep doing this."

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US House in chaos after Kevin McCarthy loses speaker votes

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On a day of political drama not seen in Congress for a century, Republican leader Kevin McCarthy repeatedly failed in his bid to be elected Speaker of the US House of Representatives. What happens now? The start of a new Congress was supposed to be a victory lap for the Republican Party as it took control of the lower chamber following November's elections.

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US House to remove bust of judge who wrote Dred Scott decision defending slavery

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Dred Scott case

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The US House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to remove from the Capitol a bust of Roger Taney, the supreme court justice who in 1857 wrote the Dred Scott decision, justifying slavery and denying that Black people had rights any "white man was bound to respect".

If the new measure is signed into law by Joe Biden, the bust will be removed from outside the old supreme court chamber and replaced by a bust of Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice.

The measure that passed the House by voice vote was reduced from one which would also have removed statues of Confederates who fought the civil war to protect slavery and which was re-introduced in the aftermath of the Capitol riot of 6 January 2021, when Trump supporters carried Confederate flags into the Capitol.

On Wednesday, Zoe Lofgren, a House Democrat from Oregon, said she would have preferred to remove Confederate statuary too, but to remove the Taney bust was literally about "who we put on a pedestal".

"The United States Capitol is a beacon of democracy, freedom and equality," said Lofgren, a member of the January 6 committee. "What and who we choose to honor in this building should represent our values. Chief Justice Taney ... does not meet the standard."

The Dred Scott case concerned an enslaved man who lived in Illinois and the Louisiana territory, where slavery was forbidden, then with his wife sued for freedom when taken back to Missouri, a state where slavery was legal.

The court ruled 7-2 for Scott's enslaver, John Sandford, an army surgeon.

Taney wrote that Black people "had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit".

The text of the bill to remove the bust of Taney called the ruling "infamous", adding that its the effects "would only be overturned years later by the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the constitution of the United States", thereby "render[ing] a bust of his likeness unsuitable for the honour of display to the many visitors to the Capitol".

It also quoted the withering judgment of Frederick Douglass, the great writer and campaigner who escaped slavery in Taney's native Maryland in 1838.

In May 1857, Douglass lamented "this infamous decision of the slave-holding wing of the supreme court", which "maintains that slaves are within the contemplation of the constitution of the United States, property ... in the same sense that horses, sheep, and swine are property".

On Wednesday Chris Van Hollen, a senator from Maryland, said: "We should honour those who advanced justice, not glorify those who stood in its way.

"Sending this legislation to the president's desk is a major step in our efforts to tell the stories of those Americans who have fought for a more perfect union - and remove those who have no place in the halls of Congress."

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US House to remove bust of judge who wrote Dred Scott decision defending slavery

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The US House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to remove from the Capitol a bust of Roger Taney, the supreme court justice who in 1857 wrote the Dred Scott decision, justifying slavery and denying that Black people had rights any "white man was bound to respect".

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Democrats win Georgia - consequences in Senate

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Democrats win Georgia - consequences in Senate

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5 takeaways from Georgia's Senate runoff | CNN Politics

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Sen. Raphael Warnock remains undefeated.

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Democrats win Georgia run off and consequences in Congress

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Democrats win Georgia run off and consequences in Congress

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5 takeaways from Georgia's Senate runoff | CNN Politics

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Sen. Raphael Warnock remains undefeated.

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Democrats consider change to order of primaries to give Black voters 'a louder and earlier voice'

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Primaries schedule

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Democrats are poised to shake up the way in which they nominate presidential candidates, after Joe Biden said the primary process should better represent the party's non-white voters.

Biden has reportedly told Democrats that Iowa, the state that has led off the Democratic voting calendar since 1976, should be moved down the calendar, with South Carolina instead going first.

The move would see New Hampshire, which has technically held the nation's first primary since 1920 (Iowa uses a slightly different system of caucuses, or in-person voting), shunted down the calendar.

Both Iowa and New Hampshire are predominantly white states. Clamor has been growing inside and outside the Democratic party for a different state, with a population more representative of the US as a whole, to be given the first go.

Associated Press reported that Biden had written to the Democratic National Committee regarding the proposal. The DNC's rules committee is meeting on Friday to vote on the primary calendar.

"For decades, Black voters in particular have been the backbone of the Democratic party but have been pushed to the back of the early primary process," Biden wrote.

"We rely on these voters in elections but have not recognized their importance in our nominating calendar. It is time to stop taking these voters for granted, and time to give them a louder and earlier voice in the process."

In the letter Biden did not mention specific states he'd like to see go first, but has told Democrats he wants South Carolina moved to the first position, Associated Press reported, citing anonymous sources. The Washington Post first reported the proposed shake-up of the primary process.

Associated Press reported that the new schedule would see South Carolina hold the first primary, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada on the same day a week later.

Georgia and Michigan, which were crucial to Biden's 2020 election win, would follow, AP reported.

Iowa came under fire after a series of technical glitches led to a three-day wait before the Democratic party declared Pete Buttigieg the winner. The results were so marred that the Associated Press ultimately did not declare any victor.

Biden also criticized the caucus system, which is used in Iowa and three other states to nominate a presidential candidate. In a caucus voters have to physically travel to a location and stand in a section of the room designated for their chosen candidate, before potentially then changing their minds and going to a different part of the room to select a different candidate.

Biden said caucuses were "restrictive and anti-worker" because they require voters "to spend significant amounts of time" on one night gathering to choose candidates in person, "disadvantaging hourly workers and anyone who does not have the flexibility to go to a set location at a set time".

Biden's direction comes as the DNC rules committee gathers in Washington on Friday to vote on shaking up the presidential primary calendar starting in 2024. If Biden runs for a second term, as he has suggested he will, the changes will be largely meaningless until the 2028 Democratic primaries as he would likely win the nomination easily in 2024.

The Republican National Committee, meanwhile, has already decided to keep Iowa's caucus as the first contest in its 2024 presidential calendar, ensuring that GOP White House hopefuls - which include Trump - will continue campaigning there frequently.

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Democrats consider change to order of primaries to give Black voters 'a louder and earlier voice'

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Democrats are poised to shake up the way in which they nominate presidential candidates, after Joe Biden said the primary process should better represent the party's non-white voters. Biden has reportedly told Democrats that Iowa, the state that has led off the Democratic voting calendar since 1976, should be moved down the calendar, with South Carolina instead going first.

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Filibuster defeated

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Passage of a measure that would protect gay marriage rights nationwide crossed a key threshold Wednesday when the Senate defeated a filibuster and set the stage for final approval shortly.

Senators voted 62-37 to move the Respect for Marriage Act to the Senate for an up-or-down vote in the near future. Sixty votes were needed to overcome the filibuster and send it to the floor.

"Together with broad bipartisan support, the Senate will provide certainty to millions of Americans in loving marriages and enshrine into law the basic protections afforded all Americans while respecting our country's critical principle of religious liberty," said Arizona Democratic Sen. Krysten Sinema, one of the negotiators for the bill, on the Senate floor prior to Wednesday's vote.

The measure would enshrine marriage equality months after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas raised the specter of reversing the 2015 landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision recognizing same sex unions.

Thomas called on his fellow justices to "reconsider" other rights established by the high court in the wake of its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, including access to contraception and gay marriage, in an opinion that sparked an outcry on the left.
More: Everything to know about the Respect for Marriage Act and the new battle for same-sex marriage
Thomas' opinion concurring with the court's decision to remove constitutional protections for abortion access prompted the Democratic-led House to pass a marriage equality bill in July, and the Democratic-led Senate to bring a bill to the floor this week.

"The American people want people to have the freedom to marry whom they love and choose," said Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, the first openly gay person elected to the Senate. "Individuals in same sex marriages and interracial marriages need and deserve the confidence and the certainty that their marriages are legal and will remain legal. These loving couples should be guaranteed the same rights and freedoms as every other marriage."

Schumer said he wants to pass the bill and send it to President Joe Biden for his signature as soon as possible, though it would have to go back to the House first.

Biden voiced support for the Respect for Marriage Act and said he would "promptly sign it into law," after the Senate vote Wednesday.
When was same-sex marriage legalized?:A quick history of an LGBTQ rights battle in the U.S.
"Love is love, and Americans should have the right to marry the person they love," Biden said in a statement. "Today's bipartisan vote brings the United States one step closer to protecting that right in law."

The legislation has its share of detractors, who were quick to criticize Wednesday's vote.

"This bill, which provides no protection or benefits that same-sex couples don't already share, deceptively gives lip service to religious liberty while undermining the First Amendment freedoms that belong to each of us," said Kristen Waggoner, CEO of Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal advocacy group.

"Make no mistake, this bill will be used by officials and activists to punish and ruin those who do not share the government's view on marriage," Waggoner also added.

Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz voiced his opposition to the bipartisan legislation in a September episode of his podcast, saying the bill would punish religious institutions that use a "biblical definition of marriage" through a loss of funding.

"This bill, without a religious liberty protection, would have massive consequences across our country, weaponizing the Biden administration to go and target universities, K-12 schools, social services organizations, churches and strip them all of their tax-status," Cruz said. "That is enormously consequential."
Respect for Marriage Act: House votes to codify same-sex marriage, fearing Supreme Court revisiting 2015 decision
Trying to address concerns over religious liberty, the bipartisan group of senators led by Baldwin unveiled an amendment to the legislation Monday aimed at addressing concerns from conservative lawmakers over religious liberty concerns.

The updated language would no longer require nonprofit religious organizations to provide support or facilities for same-sex marriages. And it would not recognize polygamous marriages.

Not acting would 'put LGBTQ families at risk'

Maine Republican Susan Collins, one of the bill's sponsors, said the changes would strengthen the measure.

"This bill recognizes the unique and extraordinary importance of marriage on an individual and societal level," she said on the floor Wednesday. "It would help promote equality, prevent discrimination and protect the rights of Americans in same-sex and interracial marriages. It would accomplish these goals while maintaining, and indeed strengthening, important religious liberty and conscience protections."

"Millions of Americans are facing dire consequences of what it would mean if Clarence Thomas has his way," Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin told reporters Tuesday. "Congress cannot allow the court to put LGBTQ families at risk."

LGBTQ activists also warned that the loss of abortion protections could lead to the loss of protections for same-sex marriage.

"It is up to the Senate to create the law of the land, that all are able to marry whom they love equally," said Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance. "That is just foundational. It's fundamental."
Contributing: Rachel Looker
Raushenbush, an ordained Baptist minister, has performed more than 100 straight and same-sex weddings. He also said that the bill would offer protection to LGBTQ couples and families.

"Our religious freedom to perform marriages and have marriages is also something that should be respected by legislators and the courts," he said. "Having performed all these same-sex marriages ... I have to stand up for those because I said to them 'by the power vested in me by the government, you are declared married' and I'm not going to turn my back on those marriages."

In July, the House passed the bill in a 267-157 vote - all 220 Democrats voted in favor, with 47 Republicans also supporting the Respect for Marriage Act, which also safeguards interracial marriages.

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Senate defeats filibuster on gay marriage bill, paving path for protecting same sex unions

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Passage of a measure that would protect gay marriage rights nationwide crossed a key threshold Wednesday when the Senate defeated a filibuster and set the stage for final approval shortly. Senators voted 62-37 to move the Respect for Marriage Act to the Senate for an up-or-down vote in the near future.

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Senate passes same sex marriage bill - bi partisanship

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In that ruling, a conservative justice, Clarence Thomas, also suggested that the precedent underpinning key decisions - including, it was implied, the rights to same-sex marriage and contraception - could be challenged.

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Respect for Marriage Act: Senate passes same-sex marriage bill

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In that ruling, a conservative justice, Clarence Thomas, also suggested that the precedent underpinning key decisions - including, it was implied, the rights to same-sex marriage and contraception - could be challenged.

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Voters in multiple states passed measures to enshrine the right to abortion during Tuesday's midterm elections, delivering a rebuke to the crackdown on reproductive freedoms taking place across the US.

In Michigan, abortion rights campaigners declared victory on a ballot initiative looking to secure a constitutional right to abortion, meaning the state will now escape the imposition of a 1931 abortion ban that was on the books.

The state is the first in the US to fight off a pre-existing abortion ban with a ballot proposal, called Proposal 3, in a move that campaigners across the country see as a possible road map for other states.

"Proposal 3's passage marks an historic victory for abortion access in our state and in our country - and Michigan has paved the way for future efforts to restore the rights and protections of Roe v Wade nationwide," Darci McConnell, the communication director for Reproductive Freedom For All, wrote in a statement, announcing the news after it was called by ABC and NBC.

The news broke as other US states too saw victories for abortion rights initiatives.

Vermont became the first state in America to protect abortion rights in its state constitution just before Michigan, calling their result on Tuesday after its voters resoundingly backed a ballot initiative by a huge margin. And in California, voters were on track to overwhelmingly pass a measure to enshrine into the state's constitution the right to an abortion and contraception.

California voters are on track to protect the right to abortion in the state Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images

"Vermont voters made history tonight," said the Vermont for Reproductive Liberty Ballot Committee, which campaigned for the amendment, according to local news. All votes had not yet been counted at 11pm ET, but the yes campaign was leading by 77% to 22%.

"Vermonters support reproductive freedom in all four corners of the state ... and they believe that our reproductive decisions are ours to make without interference from politicians," the committee said in a statement.

In Vermont, the outcome was always expected, in a New England state so pro-choice that even the Republican governor backed Proposal 5. The proposal, brought by pro-choice advocates, means the constitution now determines that an "individual's right to personal reproductive autonomy is central to the liberty and dignity to determine one's own life course".

California's Proposition 1, meanwhile, was positioned as a direct response to the US supreme court's decision that overturned decades of established access and thrust the country into turmoil. Voter's decisive support for Prop 1 will further enhance the state's reputation as a haven for reproductive care just as restrictions - and political divisions - deepen across the country.

The state's governor, Gavin Newsom - who won re-election on Tuesday with a large majority - joined in the celebrations at a Prop 1 rally.

Gavin Newsom speaking now at Proposition 1 rally, which is poised to pass by a huge margin to enshrine right to abortion in California constitution:

"We affirmed we are a true freedom state."
- Ashley Zavala (@ZavalaA) November 9, 2022

"Governor Newsom made it clear that he wants California to be visible as a haven for people seeking reproductive healthcare and Proposition 1 is part of that," said constitutional law professor Cary Franklin, who also serves as Faculty Director of the Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy at the University of California Los Angeles. "It will get media attention and people will be made more aware that California is a place they can go."

The measure had been expected to easily pass, and analysts said support for reproductive rights could draw even more women and young people to the polls, which could play positively for Democrats in California's conservative pockets.

These wins deliver more blows for Republicans who are increasingly finding that, when put to a vote, Americans frequently do not agree with a sweeping agenda to dismantle abortion rights.

So far, the anti-abortion movement has relied on judges, state houses and Republican lawmakers to curtail reproductive rights.

But since the supreme court dismantled the constitutional right to abortion on 24 June, pro-choice advocates are increasingly looking to ballot initiatives as a way of shoring up rights. The anti-abortion movement suffered a huge blow over the summer when Kansas - a usually reliably red state - slammed down a proposal brought by the Republicans, looking to confirm there was no right to abortion in the state constitution.

Supporters in Michigan listen to early voting results indicating the passage of Proposal 3, a midterm ballot measure that enshrines abortion rights, in Detroit. Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

In Michigan the mood was already jubilant at the yes campaign's watch party before they called the result, with voters screaming loudly, banging on tables and whooping in support of local voters, doctors and speakers from the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood.

"My name is Nicholas, and I live in Ingham county," one campaigner took to the stage to say. Speaking about him and his girlfriend, he added: "We knocked on over 1,500 doors and walked over a hundred miles, talking to neighbors who - like the rest of us here - agree this is a fundamental right," to screams and cheers.

Nicole Wells Stallworth, executive director at Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan later added: "We are living in a time like no other. The US supreme court did something they have never done: They reversed Roe. They tried it. And as such, we needed a campaign like none other. This campaign turned out to be just that."

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US states vote to protect reproductive rights in rebuke to anti-abortion push

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Voters in multiple states passed measures to enshrine the right to abortion during Tuesday's midterm elections, delivering a rebuke to the crackdown on reproductive freedoms taking place across the US. In Michigan, abortion rights campaigners declared victory on a ballot initiative looking to secure a constitutional right to abortion, meaning the state will now escape the imposition of a 1931 abortion ban that was on the books.

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Inside Steve Bannon's 'disturbing' quest to radically rewrite the US constitution

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A new US Constitution?

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teve Bannon, the former chief strategist in the Trump White House who is at the forefront of the Republican march toward hard-right populism, is throwing his weight behind a movement to radically rewrite the US constitution.

Bannon has devoted recent episodes of his online show the War Room to a well-funded operation which has stealthily gained ground over the past two years. Backed by billionaire donors and corporate interests, it aims to persuade state legislatures to call a constitutional convention in the hope of baking far-right conservative values into the supreme law of the land.

The goal is, in essence, to turn the country into a permanent conservative nation irrespective of the will of the American people. The convention would promote policies that would limit the size and scope of the federal government, set ceilings on or even abolish taxes, free corporations from regulations, and impose restrictions on government action in areas such as abortion, guns and immigration.

"This is another line of attack strategically," Bannon told his viewers last month. "You now have a political movement that understands we need to go after the administrative state."

By "administrative state", Bannon was referring to the involvement of the federal government and Congress in central aspects of modern American life. That includes combating the climate crisis, setting educational standards and fighting health inequities.

Former White House strategist Steve Bannon is looking to take a movement to rewrite the US constitution nationwide. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP

Mark Meckler, a founder of the Tea Party who now leads one of the largest groups advocating for the tactic, the Convention of States Action (Cosa), spelled out some of the prime objectives on Bannon's show. "We need to say constitutionally, 'No, the federal government cannot be involved in education, or healthcare, or energy, or the environment'," he said.

Meckler went on to divulge the anti-democratic nature of the state convention movement when he said a main aim was to prevent progressive policies being advanced through presidential elections. "The problem is, any time the administration swings back to Democrat - or radical progressive, or Marxist which is what they are - we are going to lose the gains. So you do the structural fix."

The "structural fix" involves Republican state legislatures pushing conservative amendments to America's foundational document. By cementing the policies into the US constitution, they would become largely immune to electoral challenge.

Were a convention achieved, it would mark the zenith of conservative state power in American politics. Over the past 12 years, since the eruption of the Tea Party, Republicans have extended their grip to more than half of the states in the country, imposing an increasingly far-right agenda on the heartlands.

Now the plan is to take that dominance nationwide.

Article V of the constitution lays out two distinct ways in which America's core document, ratified in 1788, can be revised. In practice, all 27 amendments that have been added over the past 244 years have come through the first route - a Congress-led process whereby two-thirds of both the US House and Senate have to approve changes followed by ratification by three-quarters of the states.

Meckler, working alongside other powerful interest groups and wealthy rightwing megadonors, is gunning for Article V's second route - one that has never been tried before. It gives state legislatures the power to call a constitutional convention of their own, should two-thirds of all 50 states agree.

A bar chart of party control of state legislatures since 1978.

A bar chart of party control of state legislatures since 1978.

The state-based model for rewriting the US constitution is perhaps the most audacious attempt yet by hard-right Republicans to secure what amounts to conservative minority rule in which a minority of lawmakers representing less-populated rural states dictate terms to the majority of Americans. Russ Feingold, a former Democratic US senator from Wisconsin, told the Guardian that "they want to rewrite the constitution in a fundamental way that is not just conservative, it is minoritarian. It will prevent the will of 'we the people' being heard."

Feingold has co-authored with Peter Prindiville of the Stanford constitutional law center The Constitution in Jeopardy, a new book that sounds the alarm on the states-based convention movement. "Our goal is not to scare people, but to alert them that there is a movement on the far right that is quietly getting itself to a point where it will be almost impossible to stop a convention being called," he said.

His urgency is underlined by how active the movement has become. A convention resolution framed by Cosa has passed so far this year in four states - Wisconsin, Nebraska, West Virginia and South Carolina.

The group has also been busy around November's midterm elections, using its muscle and some $600,000 (£528,252) of its reserves to support candidates amenable to the idea. "We have built the largest grassroots activist army in American history," Meckler told Bannon, probably hyperbolically.

Bannon's other guest on the War Room, Rick Santorum, a former Republican US senator from Pennsylvania who advises Cosa, told Bannon: "This is something that can happen very quickly. We are a lot further along than people think."

They are also much better funded than people might think. The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), which monitors the constitutional convention movement, estimates that it pulled in $25m (£22m) in 2020, the last year for which figures are known. The funds were split between Cosa and other influential groups on the right. They include the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), a network of state politicians and corporate lobbyists which has taken up the cry for a constitutional amendment to force balanced budget restrictions on Washington.

Much of the income is dark money, with the origins hidden. CMD has managed to identify some key donors - among them the Mercer Family Foundation set up by reclusive hedge fund manager Robert Mercer, and a couple of groups run by Leonard Leo, the mastermind behind the rightwing land grab in the federal courts.

More than $1m (£880,265) has also been donated in the form of Bitcoin.

The attraction to these groups and donors of pursuing a states route to rewriting the US constitution is easily explained. Over the past 12 years, since the eruption of the Tea Party in 2010, Republican activists have deployed extreme partisan gerrymandering to pull off an extraordinary takeover of state legislatures.

In 2010, Republicans controlled both chambers of just 14 state legislatures. Today, that number stands at 31.

"Republicans are near the high watermark in terms of their political control in the states, and that's why the pro-Trump rightwing of the party is increasingly embracing the constitutional convention strategy," said Arn Pearson, CMD's executive director.

Should a convention be achieved, the plan would be to give states one vote each. There is no legal or historical basis for such an arrangement but its appeal is self-evident.

One vote per state would give small rural conservative states like Wyoming (population 580,000) equal leverage to large urbanized progressive states like California (39.5 million). Collectively, small states would be in the majority and control would tip to the Republicans.

Last December Santorum spelled out this minoritarian vision at a private ALEC meeting. In an audio recording obtained by CMD, Santorum said: "We have the opportunity, as a result, to have a supermajority, even though we may not even be in an absolute majority when it comes to the people who agree with us."

Pearson decried such thinking as "a profoundly anti-majoritarian and anti-democratic strategy that gives small rural states most control".

With the counting system skewed towards the conservative heartlands, the list of amendments that might be pursued is disconcertingly large. Though Meckler and his allies largely avoid talking about culture war issues, it is quite conceivable that a nationwide ban on abortion and a rescinding of gay marriage would be on the table.

Bannon is hoping Republican legislatures will reach the two-thirds requirement to override supreme court rulings. Photograph: Peter Foley/EPA

More openly, advocates have talked about imposing balanced budget requirements on the US government that would dramatically shrink federal resources. Some have even proposed making income tax unconstitutional.

One of the more popular ideas circulating within rightwing constitutional convention circles, initially floated by the talk show host Mark Levin, is that states should grant themselves the ability to override federal statutes and supreme court rulings. It is hard to see how the federal rule of law could be sustained under such an arrangement with its unmistakable civil war undertones.

Under Article V, 34 states would have to call for a constitutional convention to reach the two-thirds requirement. Cosa has so far succeeded in getting 19 states to sign up, with a further six in active consideration.

ALEC, which sets a narrower remit for a convention focused on its balanced budget amendment, has gone further with 28 states on board.

Either way, there is a shortfall. To address it, constitutional convention leaders have invented increasingly exotic mathematical formulas for attaining the magic number, 34. "We used to call it fuzzy math, now we call it wacky math," Pearson said.

Advocates filed a lawsuit in Texas in February that tried to get the courts to force a constitutional convention on grounds that they had reached 34 states already - they cobbled together unrelated state convention calls, including some dating back to the 1800s. In July two bills were also introduced to the US House requiring Congress to call a convention immediately.

David Super, a law professor at Georgetown University, said the willingness to adopt outlandish logic should sound further alarm bells. It raised the stakes even higher for the November elections.

"The midterms are crucial," Super said. "Changes at state-level matter, but will not get them to 34 states. If they can take control of Congress, they could bridge the gap."

Paradoxically, what happens to Congress in the midterms could have the biggest impact on the future prospects of a states-based constitutional convention. Should the Republicans take back control of the US House and Senate they would be in a position to advance radical Republicans' demands.

"We've already seen a willingness to play fast and loose with the math on all sorts of things in Congress," Super said. "I would not be surprised if they were to make a serious attempt to adopt one of these bizarre accounting theories should they take control of both chambers in November."

That could mean a rapid dash for a convention before most Americans would have woken up to the danger.

"If the Republicans prevail in Congress, they could try to call a convention right away," Feingold said. "People should know that when they go to vote in November - this could fundamentally undermine their rights in a way that is both disturbing and permanent."

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Inside Steve Bannon's 'disturbing' quest to radically rewrite the US constitution

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teve Bannon, the former chief strategist in the Trump White House who is at the forefront of the Republican march toward hard-right populism, is throwing his weight behind a movement to radically rewrite the US constitution. Bannon has devoted recent episodes of his online show the War Room to a well-funded operation which has stealthily gained ground over the past two years.

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American elections are like Olympics. Presidential votes happen every four years in step with the summer Games: 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008, 2004 and so on.

Midterms, meanwhile, happen every four years in line with the winter Games: 2022, 2018, 2014, 2010, 2006, 2002 and so on.

"Midterms" is therefore an apt name because they take place halfway through a president's term of office. They are often regarded by pundits as a referendum on the incumbent president.

Indeed, this year's midterms on 8 November will be voters' the first opportunity to render a national verdict on the presidency of Joe Biden. But his name will not be on the ballot and other factors can come into play such as specific candidates, local dynamics or national issues.

The constitution stipulates that every member of the House of Representatives and about a third of the Senate run for office halfway between presidential elections. The midterms typically draw a lower turnout than the race for the White House but the stakes are always high and this November will be no exception.

Up for grabs are:

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives.

Thirty-five seats in the 100-member Senate. This is made up of the standard 34 seats plus a special election to fill the four years remaining in the term of retiring senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma.

Thirty-six state governorships, and three US territory governorships.

Numerous city mayorships and local officials.

One hundred and twenty-nine ballot measures in 36 states including laws on abortion in California, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana and Vermont.

The Senate and House make up the upper and lower chambers of Congress, which is the legislative branch of the federal government and responsible for making laws. House members serve for two years, and senators - whose terms are staggered - for six.

Each state is represented by two senators, making a total of 100. The Senate is currently evenly split between 50 Democrats (including independents Angus King and Bernie Sanders, who caucus, or align, with Democrats) and 50 Republicans. Kamala Harris, a Democrat, has cast 26 tie-breaking votes, more than any vice-president since John Calhoun in 1825-32.

A chart of the current party makeup of the Senate, and which seats are up for election in the midterm.

Each state receives representation in the House in proportion to the size of its population but is entitled to at least one representative. The House currently has 221 Democrats, 212 Republicans and two vacancies (due to the death of Jackie Walorski and resignation of Charlie Crist).

Most seats are not considered competitive due to years of redistricting and intensifying partisanship. A CBS News analysis of congressional maps found just 81 "competitive seats", which tend to be won by one party or the other by five percentage points or less.

Historically, the sitting president's party nearly always loses House seats in the midterms. Since the second world war the president's party has on average lost 29 seats House seats in each president's first midterm election, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. A notable exception was George W Bush who, following the September 11 terrorist attacks, saw Republicans gain eight House seats in 2002.

A chart of the current party makeup of the House, and the projection for the midterm races.

Republicans remain confident the usual pattern will hold and are focusing their campaign message on border security, crime and inflation. But there are some unusual variables this time: the spectre of Donald Trump, extreme Republican candidates and a supreme court decision to overturn the constitutional right to abortion could galvanise Democratic turnout.

Democrats feel greater confidence about holding on to the Senate. They are defending just 14 Senate seats where Republicans are defending 21.

Voters in a recent NBC News poll were split over which party they would prefer to see in charge of Congress, with 46% each backing Democrats and Republicans. Whatever happens, Joe Biden will still be president. But the results could have a profound impact on the rest of his tenure.

If Republicans do win the House or Senate or both, they will be well positioned to block much of Biden's legislative agenda and strive to turn him into a "lame duck" president. They could launch congressional investigations into Biden's son Hunter and other partisan targets.

With a Senate majority, Republicans would also be able to block cabinet and judicial appointments, for example if a supreme court vacancy should arise.

The midterms have an extra plot twist this time. Elections for governor, secretary of state, attorney general and state legislatures are arguably more important than ever. The winners could also have huge sway over abortion rights, voting rights and challenges to the legitimacy of future presidential elections.

Two cartogram maps of the US states whose governors' and secretary of state seats are up for election this midterm.

Furthermore, in most states the state legislatures control the process of redrawing the boundaries of congressional districts to adjust for population changes. The party in control tends to draw boundaries to its own political advantage - known as " gerrymandering " - with far-reaching implications for future control of the House.

Another issue to watch is how the election themselves are run. Nineteen states enacted legislation in 2021 that toughened voter registration rules and curtailed or ended procedures such as mail-in and drop-off voting. The midterms will offer some of the first evidence of the consequences for democracy.

One thing is certain in America's restless political cycle: before the last vote of the midterms is even counted, the commentary, campaigning and chaos of the next presidential election will be under way.

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What are the US midterm elections and who's running?

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American elections are like Olympics. Presidential votes happen every four years in step with the summer Games: 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008, 2004 and so on. Midterms, meanwhile, happen every four years in line with the winter Games: 2022, 2018, 2014, 2010, 2006, 2002 and so on.

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Biden to pardon thousands of federal marijuana convictions

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Presidential power - pardons

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Life for Pot, a website advocating for the release of non-violent marijuana offenders, noted that there are no known federal prisoners that will be affected by Mr Biden's measure, tweeting: "This is window dressing."

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Biden issues federal pardons for 'simple possession' of marijuana

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The move brings President Biden closer to his campaign pledge to decriminalise recreational cannabis.

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Dog death, driving and emails: The strange history of the 'October surprise'

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The October surprise

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Even in a Senate race already marred by insults and mudslinging, the term "puppy killer" stood out.

The term - directed at Trump-backed Pennsylvania Senate hopeful Dr Mehmet Oz - followed a report by the US news website Jezebel that said research led by Dr Oz had killed at least 329 dogs as well as dozens of pigs and hundreds of rabbits and rodents.

While a spokesman for Dr Oz denied the claim and said "only an idiot" would believe it, the celebrity doctor's political opponents were quick to pounce. His election rival, Democrat John Fetterman, branded him "sick" and began selling "Dog Lovers for Fetterman" campaign stickers

His wife, Gisele Fetterman, also piled on the pressure. "We know what the stakes are in this election... add one more: PUPPIES," she tweeted.

The allegations against Dr Oz came as he was closing the distance in the polls against Mr Fetterman with just one month to go until the 8 November midterm elections.

"When you frame someone as a puppy killer, it's controversial. It's attention-grabbing," Syracuse University Professor Jennifer Stromer Galley, who researches the political impact of social media, told the BBC.

"America loves its dogs," she added. "To be on the wrong side of this particular story is hard as a candidate."

The claims, some experts believe, could be the latest example of what is known as an "October surprise" - news stories that have the potential to upend campaigns and influence voters shortly before the November elections.

Here are some other notable - and varied - October surprises.

1980: Iran Hostages

The term "October surprise" comes from the 1980 electoral race between then-President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, who reportedly feared that a last-minute release of US hostages held in Iran would boost Mr Carter in the polls.

Ultimately, the hostages were released on the same day as Reagan's inaugural address.

Some - including former Iranian President Abdulhassan Banisadr - later claimed that Reagan conspired with Iran to keep the hostages from being released before the election.

Two congressional investigations, however, found no evidence that this was the case.

2000: A George W Bush revelation

During the tight final days of the 2000 presidential race between George W Bush and Al Gore, Fox News revealed that Mr Bush had been arrested for drunk driving 24 years earlier in 1976.

While Mr Bush became president, his adviser and strategist Karl Rove later said he believed the news had cost the campaign five states. In a later book, Mr Rove accused Al Gore's press secretary of spreading the news to tip the election.

"The timing of the DUI disclosure - four days before election day, with the candidates tied in the polls - was suspicious," Mr Rove wrote.

The Gore campaign denied any involvement.

2012: Mitt Romney's "47 percent"

Just weeks before Americans headed to the polls to cast their ballots for Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, video emerged of Mr Romney in which he was seen telling a group of campaign donors that "47 percent" of voters would vote for Mr Obama "no matter what".

He added that 47% of voters "believe they are victims" and that "government has a responsibility to care for them".

The videotape immediately put Mr Romney's campaign on the defensive, while Mr Obama's team made mentions of it a fixture of last-minute campaign ads and interviews.

"That hurt," Mr Romney told Fox News. "There's no question that hurt and did real damage to my campaign".

2016: Trump and Clinton

The 2016 presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump saw a number of last-minute surprises that experts speculated could upset the election.

In early October of that year, a 2005 video emerged showing soon-to-be President Trump saying that "you can do anything" to women "when you're a star". He later apologised.

The very same day, WikiLeaks unveiled emails from John Podesta - who was then chair of the Clinton campaign - which included portions of speeches she gave to Wall Street banks.

Lastly, on 28 October - 11 days before the election - then-FBI Director James Comey announced he would take "appropriate investigative steps" to examine Mrs Clinton's use of an unsecured private email server.

"[It] upended the news cycle, and soon halved Clinton's lead in the polls, imperilling her position in the Electoral college," US writer and FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver wrote the following year.

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Dog death, driving and emails: The strange history of the 'October surprise'

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Even in a Senate race already marred by insults and mudslinging, the term "puppy killer" stood out. The term - directed at Trump-backed Pennsylvania Senate hopeful Dr Mehmet Oz - followed a report by the US news website Jezebel that said research led by Dr Oz had killed at least 329 dogs as well as dozens of pigs and hundreds of rabbits and rodents.

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Party like it’s 1789! My weird, enlightening month living strictly by the US constitution

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Originalism

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I recently discovered that if you walk around New York City while carrying a colonial-era musket, you get a lot of questions.

"You gonna shoot some redcoats?"

"Where's your well-regulated militia?"

"What the hell, man?"

Questions aside, a musket can come in handy. When I arrive at my local coffee shop at the same time as another customer, he tells me: "You go first. I'm not arguing with someone holding that thing."

Why am I carrying around a 1795 firearm? Well, it's because I'm deep into Project Constitution. I've pledged to live by the US constitution as strictly and literally as possible. I want to see what it's like to be the ultimate originalist.

I got the idea after the US supreme court's latest controversial term. As you might know, it's the most conservative court in decades. It overturned Roe v Wade, saying that the constitution does not guarantee a right to abortion. It bolstered gun rights and took power away from the Environmental Protection Agency.

This is, in large part, because several justices adhere to a philosophy called originalism in some form or another. The main gist of originalism is that we should follow the original meaning of the constitution as it was understood when it was first implemented in 1789 (or, if the decision involves one of the constitution's amendments, whenever that was ratified).

So I figured: what if we took this to its logical endpoint?

To be fair, there are many versions of originalism, and no originalist would go as far as I do. Originalists argue that the constitution doesn't require you to opt for muskets over modern guns. Instead, a good originalist takes the centuries-old principles of the constitution and applies them to the current day, using history and tradition as a guide. So the right to privacy, originally meant to stop the constable banging on your door, now applies to your smartphone.

Fair enough. But it seems to me - and many other observers - that the court's originalists can be pretty stingy when it comes to updating, especially if it involves women's rights, gay rights or environmental regulations. "One of the dangers of originalism is that the people who practise it can easily get too frozen in history, and I think that's what some members of the court did this term," says Glenn Smith, a constitutional law professor at California Western School of Law. "They've let their hidebound sense of history overcome a reasonable originalist approach."

More than that, originalism can be wildly inconsistent. Sometimes a certain constitutional right is interpreted as narrowly as possible - Clarence Thomas, the most hardcore originalist on the current supreme court, doesn't believe the "liberty" recognised in the 14th amendment can expand to include gay marriage, since the drafters never conceived of gay marriage. Other times, a right can be stretched to the breaking point. Most originalists say the "right to bear arms" covers muskets as well as AR-15 semi-automatic rifles, even though they are arguably vastly different.

So what if I try to be consistent? What if I always apply the narrowest interpretation, avoiding the hubris of assuming I know what the country's founding fathers would have thought? What if I adhere to the strictest version of what was written in 1789 - or, in the case of the later amendments, what was written in 1791 or the 1870s?After all, I want to be prepared in case originalism gets even more extreme.

"My Month of Living Constitutionally" led me on a weird, enlightening and often deeply awkward journey. I handed out pamphlets, I fetched my own water, I annoyed my wife.

Here is the tale.

As a journalist, I've always been grateful to the founding fathers for the right to free speech. But I've learned the 18th-century idea of free speech was startlingly different from today's - both in how we communicate and in what is allowed.

First, there's the method I use to express free speech: Twitter. Fortunately for the founding fathers, theirs was a world of paper and ink. It seems to me Twitter is like the AR-15 of speech. It's another animal altogether. To be safe, I decide to stick to the 18th-century version of Twitter: pamphlets.

I order a quill pen and parchment paper, and scratch out a dozen analogue "tweets", one on each piece of yellowed paper.

I go to midtown Manhattan to hand out my mini-pamphlets. It's harder than I thought. Most people skilfully avoid my gaze, looking at the pavement, the skyline, anywhere but my face.

Finally, I approach a woman waiting for the light to turn green and read her my tweet out loud: "I find it egotistical that we capitalize the word 'I' but not 'he' or 'she' or 'they'."

"Yeah," she says. "I guess that's interesting."

"Do you want to take my pamphlet?"

"No, I do not."

As mixed as the reaction is, it still feels better than the Twitter cesspool. Just seeing people face to face has a healthy effect.

Now I should mention one other thing: to get fully into the founding fathers' mindset I was wearing an Alexander Hamilton costume. This is not constitutionally mandated. But I've found that there are advantages to dressing the part. The outer often affects the inner. With my tricorn hat, I somehow felt more dignified (even though I was mistaken for both a pirate and Napoleon - but, oddly, not Hamilton).

Back in constitutional times, there was another big first amendment difference: the content of speech was much more restricted. "Governmental limitations of expressive freedom were commonplace," law professor Jud Campbell wrote in the Yale Law Journal in 2017. "Blasphemy and profane swearing, for instance, were thought to be harmful to society and were thus subject to governmental regulation."

It wasn't quite Stalin's Russia, but it wasn't a free-for-all. You could be arrested for insulting God or trashing the president. What's more, according to influential originalist judge Robert Bork, the first amendment only referred to "prior restraint", meaning that the government couldn't stop you from buying a printing press. But it could punish you afterwards for what you published.

This will be fun, I think. I get to be a puritanical censor to my kids and blame it on the constitution. When my son drops his iPhone and says: "Goddammit!" I reply: "That is unprotected speech. Say 'Gosh darn it!'"

Then I go on Twitter (I know, I'm a hypocrite) and open an account under the name OriginalDude89.

I reply to people calling President Biden or Republican senator Lindsey Graham traitors. "You realise your seditious comments are not protected by the first amendment, at least as it was conceived of by the founders, right? You could be prosecuted if this were the 1790s. Please remove."

One responds: "LMFAO whatever dude!"

The 14th amendment, which guarantees equal protection, is beloved by liberals, who believe it extends to gay rights and women's rights, among others. Most liberals adhere to a philosophy called the living constitution - the idea that rights and meanings in the constitution evolve to fit the times.

Uber-originalists have a much narrower view. The 14th amendment was ratified after the civil war, in 1868, and should thereforeonly apply to the rights as understood in 1868. It was passed to guarantee rights to Black men, recently freed from slavery. Antonin Scalia, the famously conservative justice who served until his death in 2016, argued that the constitution didn't say anything about gender-based discrimination.

In 1868, women couldn't vote, and in many states couldn't hold certain jobs. This is going to be tricky.

For instance, just five years after the ratification of the 14th amendment, the supreme court upheld Illinois' decision to deny a law licence to a woman based on her gender. I email the lawyer who works with my book publisher.
"Dear Michelle: For the duration of this experiment I'd be happy to deal with any male colleagues of yours in the meantime. , I'm afraid I can't deal with you on legal matters related to my books and articles. Nothing personal!
I feel like a huge dick pressing send.

Likewise, in 1868 married women in many states couldn't sign contracts. My wife Julie is president of an events business, and prepares and signs several contracts a day.

I tell her that, from the point of view of the constitution's drafters, this activity isn't protected. I might have to take over.

"Great!" she says, moving from her desk to the couch and picking up a magazine. "I'll be over here if you have questions."

Thus commence several hours of me trying to navigate confusing and irritating paperwork. I have to ask Julie so many questions about cancellation policies and pricing that she eventually fires me.

"This isn't helping me," she says.

In addition to sexism, I have to address racism. The original 1789 constitution contained notoriously racist parts that slave-holding states insisted be included. For instance, enslaved Black people only counted as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of calculating congressional representation.

Luckily I don't have to follow that particular egregious rule. It was overturned by three post-civil war amendments.

But of course that doesn't mean the 14th amendment's promise of "equal protection" immediately got rid of constitutionally permitted racism. For instance, Black men could vote, but in many states they could not marry a white woman.

As legal scholar Elie Mystal writes in Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution: "The people who ratified the 14th amendment hated Black people marrying white people ... Either our understanding of the 14th amendment 'evolved' to include a rejection of racist anti-miscegenation laws, or it didn't. If the 14th amendment doesn't evolve, Alabama could force people to submit 'pure-blood' certifications from Ancestry.com before issuing marriage licenses."

It was not until 1967 that the supreme court ruling lifted intermarriage bans nationwide. Thankfully, today even the most ardent originalist would say interracial marriage is protected. But since I'm being strict as possible about hewing to the original vision, I guess I shouldn't. Which is a horrible thing to contemplate.

I call up my sister. She is married to a man from Peru with mixed Latin and indigenous heritage. I explain that her marriage, from an 1868 viewpoint, would probably have been seen as an interracial marriage, which would have been banned in some states.

"So American history has a lot of racist assholes - not a huge surprise," she says. "You know I want to be supportive, but this is crazy."

Agreed.

"I guess I could send you back your wedding gift," she suggests.

That could work - I'll hold on to the wine glasses I gave her till the project ends.

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"Actually I think I won't send them," she adds. "You can come and pick them up if you want."

At least the pamphlet escapade had some redeeming value. This was just plain terrible.

It's time to return to the second amendment. Originalists argue that 2A didn't just apply to muskets. Scalia wrote in a 2008 opinion that the amendment's "central component" was about individual self-defence - the amendment applies to "bearable arms ... not in existence at the time of the founding". So it can be stretched to include today's weapons.

Ironically, when it comes to guns, some liberals argue we need to hew more closely to the original worldview. They say muskets and AR-15s are just too different. One shoots four rounds a minute, the other can shoot dozens. Liberals argue it's like taking a law written for bicycles and applying it to an 18-wheeler truck. "The fact that we use the same word to describe them is almost an etymological coincidence," says Peter Shamshiri, co-host of 5-4, a podcast about the supreme court.

To avoid hubris, I'm going to stick with muskets and exercise my 2A rights by getting one. I've never owned a gun, though I was on the rifle team at my summer camp, so I guess that's something.

I call up a Texas store called Collectors Firearms. I have my eye on a model 1795 flintlock musket. It's crazy expensive - $2,000 - but the cheapest one I could find. A salesman named Nico answers the phone. I tell him I'm interested, but I want to make sure it works.

"Yes, it should fire. But since it's an antique, we don't recommend shooting it."

"Why not?"

"There is a chance of catastrophic failure."

That doesn't sound great. But what does it actually mean? Basically, Nico explains, it could explode in my face.

Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I give him my credit card number.

Three days later, the musket arrives. It's 5ft - almost as tall as my wife. I know it was once a deadly weapon - it may have even killed someone - but I'm struck by how elegant it is: dark wood, intricate metal fixings. It's also heavy. I'm amazed the revolutionary soldiers were able to carry these all day. And though I'm not a gun guy, I also have to acknowledge that this object helped the Americans win the revolution. I'm surprised by my desire to keep this historic relic even after my project ends.

So how do I shoot it? I watch a bunch of YouTube videos. It's quite a process. Take out a cartridge (paper tube filled with lead ball and powder). Bite off top. Spit. Open pan. Pour some powder in the pan. Pour rest of powder, along with ball and paper into gun barrel. Take out ramrod. Push ball down. Return ramrod. Cock. Aim. Fire.

I think I'll need to cancel my dinner plans.

But first, I'll need the lead balls and old-style black gunpowder. (I'm told not to use modern gunpowder under any circumstances.) I call a Minnesota-based company that sells vintage ammo. I get 25 balls. But the gunpowder? Well, the problem is, the factory is out of commission right now. It's being "rebuilt from their latest mishap".

Note to self: don't get a job at a vintage gunpowder factory.

So for the time being, I have to be satisfied with just carrying my unloaded musket around. Which I do. I realise my experience would have been vastly different if I weren't a white man. But I find walking around by turns exhilarating and stressful. Exhilarating because on some animal level I feel safer, more powerful. Which is insane, because it isn't even loaded. And stressful because, well, what if I run into someone with a gun from this century?

I have a team of constitutional advisers, and I ask one of them what he thinks of my musket. He points out that a strict originalist interpretation of the second amendment could favour the musket. But it could go the exact opposite direction: it could encourage citizens to buy the latest military gear from Lockheed Martin.

"A lot of the rhetoric from the right about the second amendment is about the potential to resist government," says Shamshiri. If that's true, even semi-automatic guns aren't enough. You won't be able to face down an invading air force and tanks with just guns. "That interpretation serves as an argument for access to military-grade weaponry," he says. "The point is, there's no concrete originalist interpretation. It can be taken in different directions."

I don't have the budget for a Stinger surface-to-air missile.

I've been hoping to use Project Constitution in my perpetual battle with my kids over screen time. And I think I found my secret weapon: good old amendment 14.

The amendment says that no state shall deprive any person of, among other things, "liberty". But what is liberty? Well, a 1923 supreme court ruling defined liberty as, among other things, "the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men".

So the constitution enshrines our right to pursue happiness. But it only enshrines ways to achieve happiness that were approved of when the 14th amendment was ratified in 1868.

I knock on my son's door. "The bad news is, no electronics for the duration of my constitution project. The good news is, I got you this."

I hold up a cup-and-ball that I'd bought online - a 19th-century wooden toy where you try to get a ball on a string into a cup.

"Also, no Netflix, since such entertainment is not protected by the original intent of the first amendment," I say. In the 18th century, some states banned all theatrical performances because of "their morally corrupting influence", Jud Campbell wrote in the Yale Law Journal.

My son ignores me.

Which allows me to explore another part of the constitution - the eighth amendment's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment".

How can I punish my son in a non-cruel, non-unusual way? Well, let me look to history and tradition. Up until the 1820s, the pillory - the wooden contraption with holes for the head and hands - was a frequent way to shame criminals.

According to extreme originalism, if a punishment was common during the founding era, it's not cruel or unusual today. For instance, Scalia said the death penalty is constitutional partly because it was common when the eighth amendment was ratified in 1791.

Now I know the eighth amendment is meant for government not personal use, but I'm kind of on a roll. I do a Google search for "pillory" and find there's quite a lively subculture of people who enjoy pillories. Many of the photos of models in stockades wouldn't pass 18th-century obscenity laws. The cheapest pillory I find is $50 and made of cardboard.

"OK, hands and head in," I say when it arrives a few days later.

My son shakes his head.

"Just do it for my project," I say.

"Fine."

He stays there for 30 seconds, then tears out of it like the Hulk. But he does later spend a few minutes with the cup-and-ball, so that's something.

I spent my month frantically trying to abide by other original principles. The constitution talks about the right to assemble, but does that extend to Zoom meetings? I'm not so sure. So I meet colleagues in person.

The constitution says the government cannot do searches and seizures without reason. But they only talked about searches of physical spaces. So are my computer files protected? Maybe the government could seize thousands of documents from my computer without violating the constitution. (Not that I have any secrets about foreign nations' nuclear capabilities.) The only solution I can think of is to print out all of the laptop's documents, keep the pages and delete the digital files. Which was a massive waste of time and black ink cartridges. I gave up after 200 pages.

The constitution also says that no soldiers shall be quartered in my house without my consent. I put an ad on Craigslist offering a free room to a member of the military - if and only if I decide they're cool after an interview. The only response is from an architecture student from Turkey.

o how do I feel? First, I feel grateful that I don't live in 1789. Despite the recent erosion of our civil liberties, it still feels freer than it was in the powdered-wig era. I'm also a fan of modern plumbing.

Second, I know that originalists might say that I lived by an unfairly exaggerated version of originalism. And that's probably true. But at the end of this, I'm not totally anti-originalist. Originalism comes in many flavours. I'm just opposed to the way some are practising it now.

Originalism came to the fore in the 1980s as a way to stop what the conservatives saw as the liberal supreme court's overreach. They worried the court - which approved of affirmative action and the right to abortion - was untethered and just willy-nilly making rulings that aligned with their politics. The liberals were "legislating from the bench".

So originalism was the proposed solution. Judges should put aside their views and objectively focus on the words of the text. As the conservative Federalist Society puts it: "Originalists analyze the text and evidence first, then conclude what result logically follows." As opposed to the "living constitutionalist" camp that decides "on a correct result and then use the text and precedent to support their initial assumption".

Sounds good, right? The irony is that, to many observers, originalism ended up falling prey to the exact same fallacy. Originalists seem to reason backwards. Witness that originalist decisions usually - not always, but usually - align with conservative principles. (A rare exception is Scalia's opinion that the first amendment protects burning the American flag.)

Maybe this can't be avoided. Humans - especially ones who went to law school - are brilliant at rationalisation, motivated reasoning and selective history.

But originalism doesn't have to be so frozen in the past and politically motivated. You could define originalism as the idea that we should respect the founders' broadest and best principles - equal protection and dignity, for instance - and apply those principles to modern problems. I like the sound of that. The key is to be super broad with those principles and avoid what the liberal justices, in their dissenting opinion on the recent abortion decision, called a "pinched view of how to read our constitution".

Yes, it will require cherrypicking the best principles. But as my mother once said to me: what's wrong with picking cherries, as long as they are the sweet ones?

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Party like it's 1789! My weird, enlightening month living strictly by the US constitution

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I recently discovered that if you walk around New York City while carrying a colonial-era musket, you get a lot of questions. "You gonna shoot some redcoats?" "Where's your well-regulated militia?" "What the hell, man?" Questions aside, a musket can come in handy.

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Party like it’s 1789! My weird, enlightening month living strictly by the US constitution

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Originalism

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I recently discovered that if you walk around New York City while carrying a colonial-era musket, you get a lot of questions.

"You gonna shoot some redcoats?"

"Where's your well-regulated militia?"

"What the hell, man?"

Questions aside, a musket can come in handy. When I arrive at my local coffee shop at the same time as another customer, he tells me: "You go first. I'm not arguing with someone holding that thing."

Why am I carrying around a 1795 firearm? Well, it's because I'm deep into Project Constitution. I've pledged to live by the US constitution as strictly and literally as possible. I want to see what it's like to be the ultimate originalist.

I got the idea after the US supreme court's latest controversial term. As you might know, it's the most conservative court in decades. It overturned Roe v Wade, saying that the constitution does not guarantee a right to abortion. It bolstered gun rights and took power away from the Environmental Protection Agency.

This is, in large part, because several justices adhere to a philosophy called originalism in some form or another. The main gist of originalism is that we should follow the original meaning of the constitution as it was understood when it was first implemented in 1789 (or, if the decision involves one of the constitution's amendments, whenever that was ratified).

So I figured: what if we took this to its logical endpoint?

To be fair, there are many versions of originalism, and no originalist would go as far as I do. Originalists argue that the constitution doesn't require you to opt for muskets over modern guns. Instead, a good originalist takes the centuries-old principles of the constitution and applies them to the current day, using history and tradition as a guide. So the right to privacy, originally meant to stop the constable banging on your door, now applies to your smartphone.

Fair enough. But it seems to me - and many other observers - that the court's originalists can be pretty stingy when it comes to updating, especially if it involves women's rights, gay rights or environmental regulations. "One of the dangers of originalism is that the people who practise it can easily get too frozen in history, and I think that's what some members of the court did this term," says Glenn Smith, a constitutional law professor at California Western School of Law. "They've let their hidebound sense of history overcome a reasonable originalist approach."

More than that, originalism can be wildly inconsistent. Sometimes a certain constitutional right is interpreted as narrowly as possible - Clarence Thomas, the most hardcore originalist on the current supreme court, doesn't believe the "liberty" recognised in the 14th amendment can expand to include gay marriage, since the drafters never conceived of gay marriage. Other times, a right can be stretched to the breaking point. Most originalists say the "right to bear arms" covers muskets as well as AR-15 semi-automatic rifles, even though they are arguably vastly different.

So what if I try to be consistent? What if I always apply the narrowest interpretation, avoiding the hubris of assuming I know what the country's founding fathers would have thought? What if I adhere to the strictest version of what was written in 1789 - or, in the case of the later amendments, what was written in 1791 or the 1870s?After all, I want to be prepared in case originalism gets even more extreme.

"My Month of Living Constitutionally" led me on a weird, enlightening and often deeply awkward journey. I handed out pamphlets, I fetched my own water, I annoyed my wife.

Here is the tale.

As a journalist, I've always been grateful to the founding fathers for the right to free speech. But I've learned the 18th-century idea of free speech was startlingly different from today's - both in how we communicate and in what is allowed.

First, there's the method I use to express free speech: Twitter. Fortunately for the founding fathers, theirs was a world of paper and ink. It seems to me Twitter is like the AR-15 of speech. It's another animal altogether. To be safe, I decide to stick to the 18th-century version of Twitter: pamphlets.

I order a quill pen and parchment paper, and scratch out a dozen analogue "tweets", one on each piece of yellowed paper.

I go to midtown Manhattan to hand out my mini-pamphlets. It's harder than I thought. Most people skilfully avoid my gaze, looking at the pavement, the skyline, anywhere but my face.

Finally, I approach a woman waiting for the light to turn green and read her my tweet out loud: "I find it egotistical that we capitalize the word 'I' but not 'he' or 'she' or 'they'."

"Yeah," she says. "I guess that's interesting."

"Do you want to take my pamphlet?"

"No, I do not."

As mixed as the reaction is, it still feels better than the Twitter cesspool. Just seeing people face to face has a healthy effect.

Now I should mention one other thing: to get fully into the founding fathers' mindset I was wearing an Alexander Hamilton costume. This is not constitutionally mandated. But I've found that there are advantages to dressing the part. The outer often affects the inner. With my tricorn hat, I somehow felt more dignified (even though I was mistaken for both a pirate and Napoleon - but, oddly, not Hamilton).

Back in constitutional times, there was another big first amendment difference: the content of speech was much more restricted. "Governmental limitations of expressive freedom were commonplace," law professor Jud Campbell wrote in the Yale Law Journal in 2017. "Blasphemy and profane swearing, for instance, were thought to be harmful to society and were thus subject to governmental regulation."

It wasn't quite Stalin's Russia, but it wasn't a free-for-all. You could be arrested for insulting God or trashing the president. What's more, according to influential originalist judge Robert Bork, the first amendment only referred to "prior restraint", meaning that the government couldn't stop you from buying a printing press. But it could punish you afterwards for what you published.

This will be fun, I think. I get to be a puritanical censor to my kids and blame it on the constitution. When my son drops his iPhone and says: "Goddammit!" I reply: "That is unprotected speech. Say 'Gosh darn it!'"

Then I go on Twitter (I know, I'm a hypocrite) and open an account under the name OriginalDude89.

I reply to people calling President Biden or Republican senator Lindsey Graham traitors. "You realise your seditious comments are not protected by the first amendment, at least as it was conceived of by the founders, right? You could be prosecuted if this were the 1790s. Please remove."

One responds: "LMFAO whatever dude!"

The 14th amendment, which guarantees equal protection, is beloved by liberals, who believe it extends to gay rights and women's rights, among others. Most liberals adhere to a philosophy called the living constitution - the idea that rights and meanings in the constitution evolve to fit the times.

Uber-originalists have a much narrower view. The 14th amendment was ratified after the civil war, in 1868, and should thereforeonly apply to the rights as understood in 1868. It was passed to guarantee rights to Black men, recently freed from slavery. Antonin Scalia, the famously conservative justice who served until his death in 2016, argued that the constitution didn't say anything about gender-based discrimination.

In 1868, women couldn't vote, and in many states couldn't hold certain jobs. This is going to be tricky.

For instance, just five years after the ratification of the 14th amendment, the supreme court upheld Illinois' decision to deny a law licence to a woman based on her gender. I email the lawyer who works with my book publisher.
"Dear Michelle: For the duration of this experiment I'd be happy to deal with any male colleagues of yours in the meantime. , I'm afraid I can't deal with you on legal matters related to my books and articles. Nothing personal!
I feel like a huge dick pressing send.

Likewise, in 1868 married women in many states couldn't sign contracts. My wife Julie is president of an events business, and prepares and signs several contracts a day.

I tell her that, from the point of view of the constitution's drafters, this activity isn't protected. I might have to take over.

"Great!" she says, moving from her desk to the couch and picking up a magazine. "I'll be over here if you have questions."

Thus commence several hours of me trying to navigate confusing and irritating paperwork. I have to ask Julie so many questions about cancellation policies and pricing that she eventually fires me.

"This isn't helping me," she says.

In addition to sexism, I have to address racism. The original 1789 constitution contained notoriously racist parts that slave-holding states insisted be included. For instance, enslaved Black people only counted as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of calculating congressional representation.

Luckily I don't have to follow that particular egregious rule. It was overturned by three post-civil war amendments.

But of course that doesn't mean the 14th amendment's promise of "equal protection" immediately got rid of constitutionally permitted racism. For instance, Black men could vote, but in many states they could not marry a white woman.

As legal scholar Elie Mystal writes in Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution: "The people who ratified the 14th amendment hated Black people marrying white people ... Either our understanding of the 14th amendment 'evolved' to include a rejection of racist anti-miscegenation laws, or it didn't. If the 14th amendment doesn't evolve, Alabama could force people to submit 'pure-blood' certifications from Ancestry.com before issuing marriage licenses."

It was not until 1967 that the supreme court ruling lifted intermarriage bans nationwide. Thankfully, today even the most ardent originalist would say interracial marriage is protected. But since I'm being strict as possible about hewing to the original vision, I guess I shouldn't. Which is a horrible thing to contemplate.

I call up my sister. She is married to a man from Peru with mixed Latin and indigenous heritage. I explain that her marriage, from an 1868 viewpoint, would probably have been seen as an interracial marriage, which would have been banned in some states.

"So American history has a lot of racist assholes - not a huge surprise," she says. "You know I want to be supportive, but this is crazy."

Agreed.

"I guess I could send you back your wedding gift," she suggests.

That could work - I'll hold on to the wine glasses I gave her till the project ends.

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"Actually I think I won't send them," she adds. "You can come and pick them up if you want."

At least the pamphlet escapade had some redeeming value. This was just plain terrible.

It's time to return to the second amendment. Originalists argue that 2A didn't just apply to muskets. Scalia wrote in a 2008 opinion that the amendment's "central component" was about individual self-defence - the amendment applies to "bearable arms ... not in existence at the time of the founding". So it can be stretched to include today's weapons.

Ironically, when it comes to guns, some liberals argue we need to hew more closely to the original worldview. They say muskets and AR-15s are just too different. One shoots four rounds a minute, the other can shoot dozens. Liberals argue it's like taking a law written for bicycles and applying it to an 18-wheeler truck. "The fact that we use the same word to describe them is almost an etymological coincidence," says Peter Shamshiri, co-host of 5-4, a podcast about the supreme court.

To avoid hubris, I'm going to stick with muskets and exercise my 2A rights by getting one. I've never owned a gun, though I was on the rifle team at my summer camp, so I guess that's something.

I call up a Texas store called Collectors Firearms. I have my eye on a model 1795 flintlock musket. It's crazy expensive - $2,000 - but the cheapest one I could find. A salesman named Nico answers the phone. I tell him I'm interested, but I want to make sure it works.

"Yes, it should fire. But since it's an antique, we don't recommend shooting it."

"Why not?"

"There is a chance of catastrophic failure."

That doesn't sound great. But what does it actually mean? Basically, Nico explains, it could explode in my face.

Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I give him my credit card number.

Three days later, the musket arrives. It's 5ft - almost as tall as my wife. I know it was once a deadly weapon - it may have even killed someone - but I'm struck by how elegant it is: dark wood, intricate metal fixings. It's also heavy. I'm amazed the revolutionary soldiers were able to carry these all day. And though I'm not a gun guy, I also have to acknowledge that this object helped the Americans win the revolution. I'm surprised by my desire to keep this historic relic even after my project ends.

So how do I shoot it? I watch a bunch of YouTube videos. It's quite a process. Take out a cartridge (paper tube filled with lead ball and powder). Bite off top. Spit. Open pan. Pour some powder in the pan. Pour rest of powder, along with ball and paper into gun barrel. Take out ramrod. Push ball down. Return ramrod. Cock. Aim. Fire.

I think I'll need to cancel my dinner plans.

But first, I'll need the lead balls and old-style black gunpowder. (I'm told not to use modern gunpowder under any circumstances.) I call a Minnesota-based company that sells vintage ammo. I get 25 balls. But the gunpowder? Well, the problem is, the factory is out of commission right now. It's being "rebuilt from their latest mishap".

Note to self: don't get a job at a vintage gunpowder factory.

So for the time being, I have to be satisfied with just carrying my unloaded musket around. Which I do. I realise my experience would have been vastly different if I weren't a white man. But I find walking around by turns exhilarating and stressful. Exhilarating because on some animal level I feel safer, more powerful. Which is insane, because it isn't even loaded. And stressful because, well, what if I run into someone with a gun from this century?

I have a team of constitutional advisers, and I ask one of them what he thinks of my musket. He points out that a strict originalist interpretation of the second amendment could favour the musket. But it could go the exact opposite direction: it could encourage citizens to buy the latest military gear from Lockheed Martin.

"A lot of the rhetoric from the right about the second amendment is about the potential to resist government," says Shamshiri. If that's true, even semi-automatic guns aren't enough. You won't be able to face down an invading air force and tanks with just guns. "That interpretation serves as an argument for access to military-grade weaponry," he says. "The point is, there's no concrete originalist interpretation. It can be taken in different directions."

I don't have the budget for a Stinger surface-to-air missile.

I've been hoping to use Project Constitution in my perpetual battle with my kids over screen time. And I think I found my secret weapon: good old amendment 14.

The amendment says that no state shall deprive any person of, among other things, "liberty". But what is liberty? Well, a 1923 supreme court ruling defined liberty as, among other things, "the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men".

So the constitution enshrines our right to pursue happiness. But it only enshrines ways to achieve happiness that were approved of when the 14th amendment was ratified in 1868.

I knock on my son's door. "The bad news is, no electronics for the duration of my constitution project. The good news is, I got you this."

I hold up a cup-and-ball that I'd bought online - a 19th-century wooden toy where you try to get a ball on a string into a cup.

"Also, no Netflix, since such entertainment is not protected by the original intent of the first amendment," I say. In the 18th century, some states banned all theatrical performances because of "their morally corrupting influence", Jud Campbell wrote in the Yale Law Journal.

My son ignores me.

Which allows me to explore another part of the constitution - the eighth amendment's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment".

How can I punish my son in a non-cruel, non-unusual way? Well, let me look to history and tradition. Up until the 1820s, the pillory - the wooden contraption with holes for the head and hands - was a frequent way to shame criminals.

According to extreme originalism, if a punishment was common during the founding era, it's not cruel or unusual today. For instance, Scalia said the death penalty is constitutional partly because it was common when the eighth amendment was ratified in 1791.

Now I know the eighth amendment is meant for government not personal use, but I'm kind of on a roll. I do a Google search for "pillory" and find there's quite a lively subculture of people who enjoy pillories. Many of the photos of models in stockades wouldn't pass 18th-century obscenity laws. The cheapest pillory I find is $50 and made of cardboard.

"OK, hands and head in," I say when it arrives a few days later.

My son shakes his head.

"Just do it for my project," I say.

"Fine."

He stays there for 30 seconds, then tears out of it like the Hulk. But he does later spend a few minutes with the cup-and-ball, so that's something.

I spent my month frantically trying to abide by other original principles. The constitution talks about the right to assemble, but does that extend to Zoom meetings? I'm not so sure. So I meet colleagues in person.

The constitution says the government cannot do searches and seizures without reason. But they only talked about searches of physical spaces. So are my computer files protected? Maybe the government could seize thousands of documents from my computer without violating the constitution. (Not that I have any secrets about foreign nations' nuclear capabilities.) The only solution I can think of is to print out all of the laptop's documents, keep the pages and delete the digital files. Which was a massive waste of time and black ink cartridges. I gave up after 200 pages.

The constitution also says that no soldiers shall be quartered in my house without my consent. I put an ad on Craigslist offering a free room to a member of the military - if and only if I decide they're cool after an interview. The only response is from an architecture student from Turkey.

o how do I feel? First, I feel grateful that I don't live in 1789. Despite the recent erosion of our civil liberties, it still feels freer than it was in the powdered-wig era. I'm also a fan of modern plumbing.

Second, I know that originalists might say that I lived by an unfairly exaggerated version of originalism. And that's probably true. But at the end of this, I'm not totally anti-originalist. Originalism comes in many flavours. I'm just opposed to the way some are practising it now.

Originalism came to the fore in the 1980s as a way to stop what the conservatives saw as the liberal supreme court's overreach. They worried the court - which approved of affirmative action and the right to abortion - was untethered and just willy-nilly making rulings that aligned with their politics. The liberals were "legislating from the bench".

So originalism was the proposed solution. Judges should put aside their views and objectively focus on the words of the text. As the conservative Federalist Society puts it: "Originalists analyze the text and evidence first, then conclude what result logically follows." As opposed to the "living constitutionalist" camp that decides "on a correct result and then use the text and precedent to support their initial assumption".

Sounds good, right? The irony is that, to many observers, originalism ended up falling prey to the exact same fallacy. Originalists seem to reason backwards. Witness that originalist decisions usually - not always, but usually - align with conservative principles. (A rare exception is Scalia's opinion that the first amendment protects burning the American flag.)

Maybe this can't be avoided. Humans - especially ones who went to law school - are brilliant at rationalisation, motivated reasoning and selective history.

But originalism doesn't have to be so frozen in the past and politically motivated. You could define originalism as the idea that we should respect the founders' broadest and best principles - equal protection and dignity, for instance - and apply those principles to modern problems. I like the sound of that. The key is to be super broad with those principles and avoid what the liberal justices, in their dissenting opinion on the recent abortion decision, called a "pinched view of how to read our constitution".

Yes, it will require cherrypicking the best principles. But as my mother once said to me: what's wrong with picking cherries, as long as they are the sweet ones?

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Party like it's 1789! My weird, enlightening month living strictly by the US constitution

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I recently discovered that if you walk around New York City while carrying a colonial-era musket, you get a lot of questions. "You gonna shoot some redcoats?" "Where's your well-regulated militia?" "What the hell, man?" Questions aside, a musket can come in handy.

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Kamala Harris warned on Sunday that the midterm elections in November would determine whether the "age-old sanctity" of the right to vote would be protected in the US or whether "so-called extremist leaders around the country" would continue to restrict access to the ballot box.

With just 56 days to go until the elections, and with the paper-thin Democratic majority in both chambers of Congress, the vice-president said that "everything is on the line in these elections".

In an interview with NBC News' Meet the Press, she said that the country was facing a rising domestic extremism threat.

"I think it is very dangerous and I think it is very harmful, and it makes us weaker," she said.

Harris pointed to the plethora of extreme election deniers, many endorsed by Donald Trump, who have embraced Trump's lie that the 2020 election, won by Joe Biden, was "stolen" from him.

Many of them, whom Biden has lately slammed as "Maga Republicans", after the Trump campaign slogan Make America Great Again, have won Republican nomination for statewide positions that control election administration.

Were they to win in November's they could command considerable power over both state elections and the 2024 presidential contest.

"There are 11 people right now running for secretary of state, the keepers of the integrity of the voting system of their state, who are election deniers," Harris said. "Couple that with people who hold some of the highest elected office in our country who refuse to condemn an insurrection on January 6."

She said that an "age-old sanctity" - the right to vote - had been violated as a response to Biden's victory which saw Americans turn out to vote in unprecedented numbers, often via mail or drop-boxes, which helped increase access. "I think that scared some people, that the American people were voting in such large numbers," she said.

Congressional attempts to shore up voting rights have so far been stymied by the Senate filibuster, which requires 60 votes to pass most legislation.

Harris said that should Democrats increase their Senate majority in the midterms, Biden would abolish the filibuster specifically for voting rights legislation. He could then pass stalled voting rights legislation that increases democratic safeguards.

"We need to have protections to make sure that every American, whoever they vote for, has the unobstructed ability to do that when it is otherwise their right," she said.

On Sunday morning, Harris and the second gentleman, her husband, Doug Emhoff, joined the remembrance event at the National September 11 Memorial in New York to mark the anniversary of the al-Qaida terrorist attacks on the US, which killed 2,977 people.

The vice-president did not speak, as per tradition, but in the NBC interview that aired she also spoke of America's reputation as a world role model for democracy being under threat.

She cited challenges from the right wing to election integrity, including the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, in a bid to overturn Donald Trump's defeat by Joe Biden, and extremist Republicans' unwillingness to condemn it, while also fielding many candidates in current elections who still refuse to accept the true result.

"I think it is a threat...it is very dangerous and I think it is very harmful. And it makes us weaker," she said.

She added that when meeting foreign leaders, the US "had the honor and privilege historically of holding our head up as a defender and an example of a great democracy. And that then gives us the legitimacy and the standing to talk about the importance of democratic principles, rule of law, human rights....through the process of what we've been through, we're starting to allow people to call into question our commitment to those principles. And that's a shame."

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Kamala Harris says 'everything on the line' in midterm elections

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Kamala Harris warned on Sunday that the midterm elections in November would determine whether the "age-old sanctity" of the right to vote would be protected in the US or whether "so-called extremist leaders around the country" would continue to restrict access to the ballot box.

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-62000677

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By Sarah Smith
North America editor

In the space of just 10 days there have been dramatic changes in America. Major decisions that will shape everything from environmental policy to abortion rights have been announced - but not by the president or by Congress. It is the Supreme Court which currently exercises the power to really change peoples lives.

The Democrats may control the White House and both houses of Congress but they don't have enough votes to pass much of their political agenda. Instead, in a series of rulings that are as contentious as they are momentous, the Supreme Court is shaping the future of America - taking it in a very different direction from the one US President Joe Biden had envisaged.

The overturning of Roe v Wade has provoked fury and despair amongst pro-choice campaigners as well as jubilation from anti-abortion activists who have been working for nearly 50 years to get to this point. But rather than settle the matter, the court's decision has set up the likelihood of legal challenges in states across the country, meaning the battle over abortion will continue for years to come.

The abortion ruling has grabbed the most attention. But other decisions from the Supreme Court will have truly global impact.

The last decision it issued before the end of this current term effectively made it impossible for the US to pass meaningful green policy, by ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency cannot impose limits on carbon emissions unless fresh legislation from Congress specifically authorises it to do so.

US President Joe Biden, who came to office with a pledge to tackle climate change, knows he does not have enough votes to pass a bill that would force power companies to move away from using heavily polluting coal to produce electricity.

This is not the only example of the Supreme Court butting heads with the president.

Last week, President Biden signed into law a historic gun-control bill, the first of its kind in 30 years. Spurred on by the horrific massacre of 19 primary school children in Uvalde, Texas, politicians on both sides of the aisle agreed to a very limited set of new gun control laws.

While the gun control bill didn't go nearly as far as many had hoped, it was a historic first, and a rare example of bipartisanship. But that win was tempered by the court's decision to overturn a New York gun regulation that required people to have permits to carry guns outside their homes

Issued the same day as the federal gun control bill passed the Senate, the Supreme Court effectively stripped states of the power to put significant limits on gun ownership.

As a result of these controversial rulings, the branch of government that is meant to be the most impartial and least partisan currently appears to be highly political.

Polling suggests that the court is out of step with public opinion. Two-thirds of Americans did not want abortion rights to be entirely removed, and around 60% favour more stringent gun control.

There also seems to be diminishing public trust in the Supreme Court itself. Recent polling suggests a sharp decline in public confidence in the court with only a quarter of people saying they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot of confidence" in the court.

It's something that Justice Sonya Sotomayor warned about when the court first heard arguments on the abortion case:

"Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?"

Ms Sotomayor was one of the three liberal justices who disagreed with the abortion ruling and warned about what it could mean for other rights - like same sex marriage and access to contraception.

These liberal justices will continue to be outnumbered by the six conservative judges on the court, three of whom were appointed by former President Donald Trump. Next term, the court will decide over other controversial issues, including voting rights and discrimination against gay people.

What's next for the Supreme Court in the autumn?

Moore v. Harper: Should state legislatures have more power over elections?

303 Creative LLC v. Elenis: Should a website designer be compelled to make wedding websites for same-sex couples?

Students for Fair Admissions' challenges to affirmative action: The court will hear a pair of cases on whether race should be considered in college admissions process

The court's decisions over the past 10 days - and the controversial cases set to come - have done nothing to stop the fracturing of a deeply polarised society. They have even had to erect eight-foot-high security barriers surrounding the courthouse, out of safety concerns.

Remember, at the same time as the country was learning about the court's decisions on abortion, environmental protections and gun rights, Americans were also watching the 6 January committee hearings that described how a sitting president urged an angry crowd, which he knew to be armed, to storm the US Capitol.

Americans are returning from a long weekend celebrating Independence Day, the national holiday that commemorates the democratic freedoms they won when they left the United Kingdom almost 250 years ago. Some may wonder whether the republic today is truly functioning as the founding fathers had intended.

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How the US Supreme Court is reshaping America

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By Sarah Smith North America editor In the space of just 10 days there have been dramatic changes in America. Major decisions that will shape everything from environmental policy to abortion rights have been announced - but not by the president or by Congress.

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Gun reform advocates reacted with outrage to the supreme court decision overturning a New York state handgun law that placed strict restrictions on carrying concealed firearms outside the home.

The decision could pave the way to allow almost any law-abiding American to carry hidden guns in public places, even as levels of gun deaths rise in the US.

The president, Joe Biden, said he was "deeply disappointed".

"This ruling contradicts both common sense and the constitution, and should deeply trouble us all," Biden said, urging states to pass gun control legislation.

"I call on all Americans to across the country to make their voices heard on gun safety. Lives are on the line."

New York's governor, Kathy Hochul, condemned the ruling as "reprehensible", adding that "it could place millions of New Yorkers in harm's way".

"I'm prepared to call the legislature back to deal with this. We are looking at dates," Hochul said.

Everytown for Gun Safety, a non-profit that advocates for gun control, put out a statement condemning the decision.

"We're currently doing a careful reading of the entire decision in NYSRPA v Bruen and will give more detailed analysis later today," it said on Twitter. "But the fact that the court ruled against New York makes it clear that it chose to put lives at risk and showed indifference to public safety."

New York's attorney general, Letitia James, also commented on social media, noting that her office was current reviewing the decision and would "continue to do everything in our power to protect New Yorkers from gun violence and preserve our state's commonsense gun laws".

Many conservatives praised the decision as a protection of the right to bear arms. Lauren Boebert, a Republican representative from Colorado, celebrated with a tweet: "Scotus just struck down New York's unconstitutional gun law! Glory!"

The US House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, also praised the decision, tweeting: "While states like NY have tried to restrict your Constitutional 2nd Amendment right through burdensome laws and regulations, today's Supreme Court ruling rightfully ensures the right of all law-abiding Americans to defend themselves without unnecessary government interference."

The supreme court's opinion comes with the country still reeling from several mass shootings.

Last month, an 18-year-old with a legally purchased assault-style rifle allegedly shot and killed 10 people in a racist attack on a supermarket in a majority Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York.

Less than two weeks later, another 18-year-old broke into Robb elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and shot and killed 19 children and two adults, before being killed by law enforcement officers.

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Supreme court decision to overturn New York gun law met with outrage

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Gun reform advocates reacted with outrage to the supreme court decision overturning a New York state handgun law that placed strict restrictions on carrying concealed firearms outside the home. The decision could pave the way to allow almost any law-abiding American to carry hidden guns in public places, even as levels of gun deaths rise in the US.

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Biden warns US democracy imperiled by Trump and Maga extremists

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Presidential power - the bully pulpit

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Biden warns US democracy imperiled by Trump and Maga extremists

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In a primetime address, the president further said the Republican party was ‘dominated, driven and intimidated’ by Trump

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hen Peter Meijer voted to impeach Donald Trump, breaking with nearly all of his Republican colleagues in one of his first acts as a newly elected member of Congress, Democrats praised him as the kind of principled conservative his party - and the nation - desperately needed.

But this election season, as Meijer fought for his political survival against a Trump-endorsed election denier in a primary contest for a Michigan House seat, Democrats twisted the knife and helped his extremist opponent win.

It is part of a risky, and some say downright dangerous, strategy Democrats are using in races for House, Senate and governor: spending money in Republican primaries to elevate far-right candidates over more mainstream conservatives in the hope that voters will recoil from the election-denying radicals in November.

In Michigan, the gamble paid off - for now. Meijer lost after the House Democrats' official campaign arm spent $425,000to elevate Meijer's opponent, John Gibbs, a former Trump administration official who asserted, falsely, that Joe Biden's victory was " simply mathematically impossible ".

It is impossible to know what impact the Democrats' ad had on the race, but cost more than the Gibbs campaign raised.

Now, as the primary season nears its conclusion and the political battlefield takes shape, Democrats will soon learn whether the gambit was successful. While election deniers have prevailed in Republican primaries across the country without any aid from Democrats, critics say the effort has already undermined the party's grave warnings about the threats to democracy.

"It is immoral and dangerous," said Richard Hasen, a UCLA law professor and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project. He said the risk of miscalculation was great, particularly at a moment when the January 6 committee is attempting to show just how destructive Trump's stolen election myth has been for American democracy.

"It's hard for Democrats to take the high road when they're cynically boosting some of these candidates in order to try to gain an advantage in the general election," he said. "That doesn't mean that what Democrats are doing is as bad as what Republicans are doing, but it still makes it objectionable."

Meijer's defeat has fueled a sharp debate among Democrats over the potential perils of the tactic, especially as the party warns of the risks posed by these very Republicans. But others argue it's a necessary and calculated gamble in pursuit of keeping a dangerous party from winning power.

"If you let Republicans back in power, it is going to be those Maga Republicans who are going to take away your rights, your benefits and your freedom," Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said, defending the strategy in a recent interview on MSNBC's Morning Joe. "We need to stop it."

The president's party historically loses ground during the midterms. Decades-high inflation and widespread frustration with leaders in Washington have dragged Joe Biden's approval ratings to record lows, hampering Democrats' efforts to preserve their razor-thin majorities in Congress.

The ads are ostensibly scripted as an attack - highlighting a candidate's loyalty to Trump and their conservative views on abortion. In Michigan, for example, Democrats charged that Gibbs was "handpicked by Trump to run for Congress" and "too conservative" for the district. But when aired during a primary, the message is intended to appeal to the conservative base.

"The voters in the Republican primary had agency," said Bill Saxton, the Democratic party chair in Kent county. "They had two choices."

Saxton, whose county is situated in the west Michigan district, said it was now time to set aside the bickering over tactics and focus on the real threat: Gibbs's extremism.

In 2020, Gibbs could not win Senate confirmation to direct Trump's Office of Personnel Management over past comments he made, among them calling Democrats the party of "'Islam, gender-bending, anti-police, 'u racist!'".

Democrats' efforts to pick their opponents extends far beyond a single Michigan House race. They have deployed this strategy in House, Senate and governor's races across the country.

In Maryland, the Democratic Governors Association boosted Dan Cox, who attended the January 6 rally and called Vice-President Mike Pence a "traitor" for not stopping the congressional certification of Biden's victory as Trump wished. He won the party's nomination for governor. That was after Democrats' spent millions of dollars to successfully promote the Trump-backed election denier in the Illinois Republican gubernatorial primary. Both states lean Democratic and the party is reasonably confident their candidate will prevail.

Doug Mastriano, an election denier, is the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania. His Democratic opponent spent big to support him in the primary. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP

The race causing the most angst is in battleground Pennsylvania. There the Democratic nominee for governor, Josh Shapiro, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in TV ads boosting the rightwing extremist Doug Mastriano - far more than the candidate spent on his own campaign. Mastriano, who attended the January 6 rally and has cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 election, is now the Republican nominee in a swing state where the chief elections officer is appointed by the governor.

Polls show a tight race.

The strategy hasn't always worked. In California, the incumbent Republican congressman David Valadao narrowly beat back a rightwing challenger despite Democratic spending on ads that highlighted his vote to impeach Trump.

And in Colorado, an outside group aligned with Democrats spent millions to boost an election denier who marched to the Capitol with rioters on January 6 over a relatively moderate Republican, businessman Joe O'Dea, in the race to take on the Democratic senator Michael Bennet. O'Dea won and now the resources Democrats spent to make him unpalatable to the Republican base may help him appeal to moderate and independent swing voters.

Meddling in the opposition's primary is not a new tactic. In 2012, Claire McCaskill, then a Democratic senator from Missouri, was facing a difficult re-election in a state where Barack Obama was deeply unpopular.

Surveying her prospective opponents, she devised a plan to lift the one she thought would be the weakest candidate, the far-right congressman Todd Akin. It worked: he won the primary, and she beat him decisively in the general.

But a decade later, she is urging caution.

"This has to be done very carefully," she told NPR, adding: "You also have to be careful what you wish for."

This has to be done very carefully. You also have to be careful what you wish for

Claire McCaskill

Maloney, the DCCC chair, has said the committee has a "high bar" for meddling in a Republican primary, but insisted that there are races where it "does make sense". Still, it has become an issue for Maloney in his own primary race, where his challenger, Alessandra Biaggi, has accused him of playing "Russian roulette with our democracy".

Some Democrats have also expressed misgivings about punishing the few Republicans willing to stand up to Trump. David Axelrod, a longtime Democratic strategist and political adviser to Barack Obama, said Democrats' involvement in Meijer's primary "makes them an instrument of Trump's vengeance".

Trump's support has been one of the most decisive factors in choosing the party's standard bearers, not Democrats, said David Turner, a spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association. In these races, he said Democrats seized the opportunity to expose a prospective opponent's extremism early and pre-emptively blunt any attempt to "pivot" toward the mainstream during the general election.

Turner blamed Republican leaders for being "too cowardly to tell their voters the truth" about the 2020 election, a failure that he said ensured the success of election-deniers in the GOP's 2022 nominating contests.

In Pennsylvania, one of Mastriano's chief rivals was Lou Barletta, a signatory to the state's fake elector scheme. And in Colorado, the candidate deemed more moderate won the Republican primary for governor but then selected an election denier to be her running mate.

"There aren't any Liz Cheneys running for governor," he said, referring to the Republican vice chair of the January 6 committee who may lose her primary over efforts to hold Trump accountable. "In terms of gubernatorial candidates, the scary part is that all these Republicans are regurgitating the same Maga talking points."

Still, some Democrats argue that they are being held to a different standard than Republicans, who have failed to hold Trump and loyalists in Congress accountable. They say Republicans often cheer their leaders for being ruthless while Democrats are criticized for refusing to play hardball, especially when the stakes are the highest.

As a result of gerrymandering, Republican dominance of the redistricting process and historical trends, Democrats see few opportunities to flip House seats this cycle. Michigan's third congressional district is one of them.

Gibbs has downplayed the impact of the ads, and projected confidence that he can win in November.

Hillary Scholten, the Democrat who will face him in the Michigan House race and had no involvement in the DCCC's decision, called the focus on her party's tactics an unwanted distraction from the issues voters care most about.

Scholten said: "It is the Republicans that decided who they wanted in their primary, and they chose John Gibbs, an extremist that embraces conspiracy theories and is way out of step with west Michigan. I'm focused on making sure he doesn't get to Congress."

Her newly redrawn Michigan district is considerably more favorable to Democrats this cycle than it was two years ago. And many Democrats believe Scholten, a former justice department attorney in the Obama administration who came close to beating Meijer in 2020, would have been a strong contender in a rematch.

While many are confident she can beat Gibbs, those still haunted by Trump's against-the-odds victory in 2016 fear that in a "wave" election, Republicans deemed unelectable could be swept to power.

On the eve of his primary race, Meijer lashed Democrats in an online essay that accused them of "sell[ing] out any pretense of principle for political expediency".

"Republican voters will be blamed if any of these candidates are ultimately elected," Meijer wrote in an online essay published on the eve of the primary, "but there is no doubt Democrats' fingerprints will be on the weapon. We should never forget it."

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Democratic ads boosted extremists in Republican primaries. Was that wise?

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hen Peter Meijer voted to impeach Donald Trump, breaking with nearly all of his Republican colleagues in one of his first acts as a newly elected member of Congress, Democrats praised him as the kind of principled conservative his party - and the nation - desperately needed.

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Senate Democratic leaders say they have reached an agreement on the party's major $739bn climate and economic bill with Kyrsten Sinema - the centrist Democrat whose opposition remained a major hurdle to passing the most ambitious US climate legislation yet.

The support of Sinema, a former member of the Green party who has evolved into one of Congress's most conservative Democrats, was crucial to the passage of the bill, which tackles energy, environment, health and tax measures. Its success is seen as the Democratic party's most substantive chance to deliver domestic policy progress before the midterm elections.

Backing from all 50 Democratic senators will be needed to pass any legislation in the evenly divided Senate given the party's narrow majority and Republican resistance to acting on the climate crisis.

The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said lawmakers had achieved a compromise "that I believe will receive the support" of all Democrats in the chamber. His party needs unanimity to move the measure through the 50-50 Senate, along with Vice-President Kamala Harris's tie-breaking vote.

Sinema, the Arizona senator seen as the pivotal vote, said in a statement that she had agreed to 11th-hour changes in the measure's tax and energy provisions and was ready to "move forward" on the bill.

She said Democrats had agreed to remove a provision raising taxes on "carried interest", or profits that go to executives of private equity firms. That's been a proposal she has long opposed, though it is a favorite of other Democrats, including the conservative West Virginia Democratic senator Joe Manchin, an architect of the overall bill.

The carried interest provision was estimated to produce $13bn for the government over the coming decade, a small portion of the measure's $739bn in total revenue.

Securing Sinema's support was the next challenge for Democrats after Manchin, the centrist Democrat famed for thwarting his own party's climate goals, surprised Washington last week by backing the plan.

Manchin, who has made millions of dollars from his ownership of a coal-trading firm, made an abrupt U-turn last week and announced support for $369bn in spending to support renewable energy and reduce emissions.

Schumer has said he hopes the Senate can begin voting on the bill - known as the Inflation Reduction Act - on Saturday. Passage by the House, which Democrats control narrowly, could come next week.

Final congressional approval of the election-year measure would be a marquee achievement for Joe Biden and his party, notching an accomplishment they could tout to voters as November approaches.

The Senate and the House of Representatives are not in session on Friday but Schumer has indicated that he intends to move the bill forward this weekend and warned his Capitol Hill colleagues of some long days and nights of debate and votes ahead.

Sinema agreed to the legislation in principle on Thursday night but added that before she can confirm, she needs it signed off by the Senate parliamentarian, the official who will check whether the spending bill complies with the rules to allow it to be passed using the reconciliation process that allows a simple majority vote, rather than being subject to the 60-vote majority filibuster rule.

Schumer said that the deal first with Manchin and now with Sinema produced a bill that was now one step closer to becoming law.

"The agreement preserves the major components of theInflation Reduction Act, including reducing prescription drug costs, fighting climate change, closing tax loopholes exploited by big corporations and the wealthy, and reducing the deficit," he said.

Joe Biden urged the Senate to pass the bill swiftly. It must then return to the House for another vote before it can make its way to the US president's desk.

Bernie Sanders had been a big backer of the original $3.5tn Build Back Better bill, which was wide-ranging but has now shrunk down, after being blocked repeatedly by Manchin and Sinema, to the Inflation Reduction Act. The Vermont senator called the shrunken $739bn bill "better than nothing", the Washington Post reported on Friday.
Oliver Mil man contributed reporting

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Democrats secure breakthrough with Kyrsten Sinema on climate bill

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Senate Democratic leaders say they have reached an agreement on the party's major $739bn climate and economic bill with Kyrsten Sinema - the centrist Democrat whose opposition remained a major hurdle to passing the most ambitious US climate legislation yet.

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Tuesday’s primaries offered a glint of hope for Democrats this fall | Lloyd Green

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Kansas voters affirmed a women’s right to choose. Meanwhile, Republicans across the US elevated extremist candidates who may be unpopular in general elections

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Kansas votes to protect abortion rights in state constitution

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Kansans secured a huge win for abortion rights in the US on Tuesday night when they voted to continue to protect abortion in the state constitution.

The race was called by a host of US groups like NBC News, the New York Times and Decision Desk HQ.

The move will be seen as huge a loss for the anti-abortion movement and a major win for abortion rights advocates across America, who will see the result as a bellwether for popular opinion.

Kansas - a deeply conservative and usually reliably Republican state - is the first US state to put abortion rights to a vote since the US supreme court ruled to overturn constitutional protections for abortion in late June.

The state will remain a safe haven for abortion in the midwest, as one of the few states in the region where it remains legal to perform the procedure. Many other states have undertaken moves to make abortion largely illegal since June.

Joe Biden issued a statement welcoming the result. "This vote makes clear what we know: the majority of Americans agree that women should have access to abortion and should have the right to make their own health care decisions," the US president said.

The Kansas state senator Dinah Sikes, a Democrat, cried as the vote came in, and turned to her friends and colleagues, showing them goosebumps on her arm.

"It's just amazing. It's breathtaking that women's voices were heard and we care about women's health," she told the Guardian, after admitting she had thought the vote would be close. "But we were close in a lot of rural areas and that really made the difference - I'm just so grateful," she said.

The "No" campaign - which was protecting abortion rights - was strongly ahead in the referendum with 62% of the vote with the majorityof ballots counted. That means millions of dollars lost for the Catholic church who contributed more than $3m trying to eradicate abortion rights in Kansas, according to campaign finance records.

Kansans turned out to vote in heavy numbers on Tuesday, in a referendum brought by the Kansas Republican legislature that was criticized for being misleading, fraught with misinformation and voter suppression tactics.

After failing to get a more directly named referendum, " Kansas No State Constitutional Right to Abortion ", on the ballot in 2020, Republicans switched tactics, naming this amendment "Value Them Both".

The vote was scheduled for August, when voter turnout is historically low, particularly among independents and Democrats, and the wording on the ballot paper was criticized for being unclear.

"The ballot mentions a state constitutional right to abortion funding in Kansas, but that funding has never really been on the table," Mary Ziegler, a US abortion law expert from the University of California, Davis told the Guardian on Monday.

Kansans for Life, one of the main backers for a "yes" vote, told church congregants on 27 July that removing protections for abortion in Kansas would prevent late-term abortions, lack of parental consent and tax payer funding for abortion, despite none of these being the law in Kansas. Abortions in Kansas are limited to 22 weeks in the cases of life threatening or severely compromised physical complications.

It was a tense and bitterly fought campaign that saw churches vandalized and yard signs stolen, in a state where the abortion doctor George Tiller was murdered by anti-abortion activists in 2009.

But on Tuesday night scenes of jubilation broke out at a watch party for the victorious No campaign in Kansas City. "We're free!" shouted Mafutari Oneal, 56, who was working at the bar after the vote was called and a rush of drinks orders came in.

"I don't want no government telling me what to do. I'm so happy," she said.

In a speech just after victory was sealed, Rachel Sweet, the campaign manager for Kansans for Constitutional Freedom, said the win had come against all the odds.

"We knew it was stacked against us from the moment we started but we did not despair - we did it, and these numbers speak for themselves," Sweet said.

"We knocked tens of thousands of doors and had hundreds of thousands of phone calls ... We countered millions of dollars in misinformation," she said. "We will not tolerate extreme bans on abortion in our state."

Ashley All, the spokesperson for KCF, who led the "No" campaign alongside Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, told the Guardian that the key to driving voter turnout was not seeing abortion as a partisan issue in Kansas.

"We demonstrated Kansas' free state roots," she said. "It will be interesting for other states to watch this and see this is not a partisan issue. Everyone from Republicans, to unaffiliated voters to hardcore libertarians came out to say: 'No, we don't want the government involved in what we do with our bodies'."

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Kansas votes to protect abortion rights in state constitution

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Kansans secured a huge win for abortion rights in the US on Tuesday night when they voted to continue to protect abortion in the state constitution. The race was called by a host of US groups like NBC News, the New York Times and Decision Desk HQ.

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Kansas votes to protect abortion rights in state constitution

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Kansans secured a huge win for abortion rights in the US on Tuesday night when they voted to continue to protect abortion in the state constitution.

The race was called by a host of US groups like NBC News, the New York Times and Decision Desk HQ.

The move will be seen as huge a loss for the anti-abortion movement and a major win for abortion rights advocates across America, who will see the result as a bellwether for popular opinion.

Kansas - a deeply conservative and usually reliably Republican state - is the first US state to put abortion rights to a vote since the US supreme court ruled to overturn constitutional protections for abortion in late June.

The state will remain a safe haven for abortion in the midwest, as one of the few states in the region where it remains legal to perform the procedure. Many other states have undertaken moves to make abortion largely illegal since June.

Joe Biden issued a statement welcoming the result. "This vote makes clear what we know: the majority of Americans agree that women should have access to abortion and should have the right to make their own health care decisions," the US president said.

The Kansas state senator Dinah Sikes, a Democrat, cried as the vote came in, and turned to her friends and colleagues, showing them goosebumps on her arm.

"It's just amazing. It's breathtaking that women's voices were heard and we care about women's health," she told the Guardian, after admitting she had thought the vote would be close. "But we were close in a lot of rural areas and that really made the difference - I'm just so grateful," she said.

The "No" campaign - which was protecting abortion rights - was strongly ahead in the referendum with 62% of the vote with the majorityof ballots counted. That means millions of dollars lost for the Catholic church who contributed more than $3m trying to eradicate abortion rights in Kansas, according to campaign finance records.

Kansans turned out to vote in heavy numbers on Tuesday, in a referendum brought by the Kansas Republican legislature that was criticized for being misleading, fraught with misinformation and voter suppression tactics.

After failing to get a more directly named referendum, " Kansas No State Constitutional Right to Abortion ", on the ballot in 2020, Republicans switched tactics, naming this amendment "Value Them Both".

The vote was scheduled for August, when voter turnout is historically low, particularly among independents and Democrats, and the wording on the ballot paper was criticized for being unclear.

"The ballot mentions a state constitutional right to abortion funding in Kansas, but that funding has never really been on the table," Mary Ziegler, a US abortion law expert from the University of California, Davis told the Guardian on Monday.

Kansans for Life, one of the main backers for a "yes" vote, told church congregants on 27 July that removing protections for abortion in Kansas would prevent late-term abortions, lack of parental consent and tax payer funding for abortion, despite none of these being the law in Kansas. Abortions in Kansas are limited to 22 weeks in the cases of life threatening or severely compromised physical complications.

It was a tense and bitterly fought campaign that saw churches vandalized and yard signs stolen, in a state where the abortion doctor George Tiller was murdered by anti-abortion activists in 2009.

But on Tuesday night scenes of jubilation broke out at a watch party for the victorious No campaign in Kansas City. "We're free!" shouted Mafutari Oneal, 56, who was working at the bar after the vote was called and a rush of drinks orders came in.

"I don't want no government telling me what to do. I'm so happy," she said.

In a speech just after victory was sealed, Rachel Sweet, the campaign manager for Kansans for Constitutional Freedom, said the win had come against all the odds.

"We knew it was stacked against us from the moment we started but we did not despair - we did it, and these numbers speak for themselves," Sweet said.

"We knocked tens of thousands of doors and had hundreds of thousands of phone calls ... We countered millions of dollars in misinformation," she said. "We will not tolerate extreme bans on abortion in our state."

Ashley All, the spokesperson for KCF, who led the "No" campaign alongside Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, told the Guardian that the key to driving voter turnout was not seeing abortion as a partisan issue in Kansas.

"We demonstrated Kansas' free state roots," she said. "It will be interesting for other states to watch this and see this is not a partisan issue. Everyone from Republicans, to unaffiliated voters to hardcore libertarians came out to say: 'No, we don't want the government involved in what we do with our bodies'."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Kansas votes to protect abortion rights in state constitution

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Kansans secured a huge win for abortion rights in the US on Tuesday night when they voted to continue to protect abortion in the state constitution. The race was called by a host of US groups like NBC News, the New York Times and Decision Desk HQ.

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Senator Joe Manchin suddenly backs Biden climate and tax bill

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Manchin and Biden

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However, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a moderate Arizona Democrat who has in the past acted as a roadblock to President Biden's agenda, could still scupper the plan. She declined to comment on news of the agreement on Wednesday night.

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Senator Joe Manchin suddenly backs Biden climate and tax bill

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However, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a moderate Arizona Democrat who has in the past acted as a roadblock to President Biden's agenda, could still scupper the plan. She declined to comment on news of the agreement on Wednesday night.

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Senator Joe Manchin suddenly backs Biden climate and tax bill

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Manchin supports Biden

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However, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a moderate Arizona Democrat who has in the past acted as a roadblock to President Biden's agenda, could still scupper the plan. She declined to comment on news of the agreement on Wednesday night.

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Senator Joe Manchin suddenly backs Biden climate and tax bill

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However, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a moderate Arizona Democrat who has in the past acted as a roadblock to President Biden's agenda, could still scupper the plan. She declined to comment on news of the agreement on Wednesday night.

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-62232518

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Republicans help pass House gay marriage bill

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Democrats argue gay marriage rights could be at risk, but Republican critics say the bill is a gimmick.

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AIPAC- Influence of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committees

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AIPAC- Influence of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committees

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/18/democratic-primaries-aipac-israel-hardline

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Pro-Israel lobby groups have poured millions of dollars into a Democratic primary for a Maryland congressional seat on Tuesday, in the latest attempt to block an establishment candidate who expressed support for the Palestinians.

A surge in political spending by organisations funded by hardline supporters of Israel, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), has reshaped Democratic primaries over recent months even though debate about the country rarely figures as a major issue in the elections.

Critics accuse Aipac and its allies of distorting Democratic politics in part because much of the money used to influence primary races comes from billionaire Republicans.

Aipac has spent $6m on Tuesday's contest in Maryland, more than any other organisation, to oppose Donna Edwards, who served eight years as the first Black woman elected to Congress from Maryland before losing a bid for the Senate in 2016.

Edwards is endorsed by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, among other leading Democrats.

But she angered some pro-Israel groups during her stint as a representative by failing to back resolutions in support of Israel over its 2011 war in Gaza and other positions. She also backed the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran when it was strongly opposed by the Israeli government and therefore Aipac.

Aipac launched a super political action committee, or super Pac, the United Democracy Project (UDP), in December as a legal mechanism to spend unlimited amounts to directly influence elections and counter growing criticism within the Democratic party of Israel's continued domination of the Palestinians.

The lobby group kickstarted the UDP with $8.5m and donations from wealthy donors with close ties to Israel. They include two Republican billionaire businessmen and Trump campaign funders, Paul Singer and Bernie Marcus, as well as the billionaire Israeli American Democratic donor Haim Saban.

UDP-funded television ads criticising Edwards make no mention of Israel and instead attack her as an ineffective politician who got nothing done during her stint in Congress. Over the past two months, Edwards has lost a significant lead in opinion polls over her rival, Glenn Ivey, who is now marginally ahead.

A more liberal pro-Israel group, J Street, which calls for the US government to take a harder line with the Israeli government to end to the occupation, has backed Edwards through its Super Pac with about $700,000 in ads.

A J Street spokesperson, Logan Bayroff, accused Aipac of being a Republican front organisation in part because of its endorsement of members of Congress who voted to overturn Joe Biden's election victory following the 6 January 2021 storming of the Capitol.

"It's alarming that a group that has endorsed some of the most rightwing extremist Republicans, with a super Pac funded in part by Republican billionaire megadonors, could go into a Democratic primary and spend and spend with the single-minded purpose of crushing a fairly popular mainstream candidate who they've labelled anti-Israel with no evidence, no real justification at all, for such a claim," Bayroff said.

"This is all about trying to drive the party back into more rightward direction on Israel and foreign policy. It's really alarming and it's fundamentally anti-democratic when a group can influence this process in such a way because most voters wouldn't know where this money is coming from. I think that's dangerous."

Bayroff said Aipac and UDP were attempting to intimidate candidates into "feeling that they cannot offer good faith criticism of Israeli policy, that they cannot vocally support Palestinian rights".

"They recognise that the political space on these issues in the Democratic party has opened up and they want to try to arrest and reverse that trend, and push us back to a place in which there's really very little public debate or discussion about the correct American role in the region," he said.

The most visible sign of that shift has come from members of "the Squad" of congressional progressives - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib - who are unusually vocal in their support of the Palestinian cause. Opinion polls also show that younger Democrats, including American Jews, are more openly critical of Israel.

A UDP spokesman, Patrick Dorton, dismissed J Street's accusations including the charge of being a Republican front group by pointing to Saban's financial support.

"We're exercising our democratic first amendment rights in participating in these elections. If you want to look at politicians who've intimidated people and chilled discussion on the US Israel relationship, look at the Squad," he said.

"In part UDP was formed because there were an increasing number of candidates with radical anti-Israel views running for Congress. Our view is that is dangerous for American democracy and could negatively impact the the bipartisan support for the US-Israel relationship."

UDP and other pro-Israel groups, such as the Democratic Majority for Israel and Pro-Israel America, have spent heavily to oppose candidates regarded as anti-Israel in Democratic primaries from Texas to Ohio and California.

The UDP helped defeat six of seven contenders it opposed, including the co-chair of Bernie Sanders' most recent presidential campaign, Nina Turner, in a solid Democratic seat in Ohio. Turner, who has argued that substantial US aid to Israel should not be used to perpetuate the occupation of Palestinian land, at one point held a lead of 30 percentage points - but lost.

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Pro-Israel hardliners spend millions to transform Democratic primaries

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Pro-Israel lobby groups have poured millions of dollars into a Democratic primary for a Maryland congressional seat on Tuesday, in the latest attempt to block an establishment candidate who expressed support for the Palestinians.