|
Post by Webster on Feb 28, 2024 13:34:58 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Also declaring victory is Abandon Biden, a group opposed to the president for his support of Israel. “In Michigan’s primary last night, we witnessed not just a rejection of Joe Biden but a searing condemnation of his presidency’s moral vacuity. Election results reveal that precincts with Arab and Muslim American populations have gone from supporting Biden by 90% in 2020 to thoroughly rejecting Biden,” the group said in a press release. It continued: Our call to ‘Abandon Biden’ wasn’t just heard; it roared across Michigan, echoing our refusal to stand with a president whose policies reek of genocide.
The unprecedented support for ‘uncommitted’ in Michigan makes it clear that complicity in genocide isn’t up for debate. It also signals that what awaits Biden in November isn’t a guaranteed victory. And what awaits the Democratic Party is irrelevance.
Here’s more on the “uncommitted” campaign’s success in the Michigan Democratic primary, from the Guardian’s Oliver Laughland: Standing before shimmering gold curtains on Tuesday evening, the mayor of Dearborn, Abdullah Hammoud, spoke with pride about his city. “We had the audacity to choose people over political party,” he said. “We had the damn audacity to put people over president.”
For many gathered at this sprawling banquet hall in the heart of America’s most concentrated Muslim population, the outcome of last night’s Democratic primary in Michigan was beyond even the boldest of predictions.
Although Joe Biden took the state, it was the hastily organized but committed grassroots campaign against the president’s support for the Israeli government’s war with Gaza that took the night. Organizers with Listen to Michigan, a group that urged voters to withdraw support for Biden and instead vote uncommitted, had hoped for a showing of 10,000 votes. They returned more than 100,000 – a clear demonstration of the growing fractures among the diverse coalition that brought Biden to power in 2020.
It is a warning shot to the Democratic party, and shows more signs of expanding than diminishing as the primary season wears on.
|
|
|
Post by Webster on Feb 29, 2024 17:23:25 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Webster on Feb 29, 2024 17:27:37 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Supporters of Michigan 'uncommitted' campaign say Biden official's comments 'deeply offensive'After a write-in campaign in protest of Joe Biden’s support for Israel managed to win about 13% of the vote in Michigan’s primary on Tuesday, a top official on the president’s campaign said this morning that they’d be reaching out to the organizers. But the comments on NPR by Mitch Landrieu, the Biden re-election campaign’s co-chair, did not go over well with one of the groups involved in the effort, which did not prevent the president from winning the swing state’s Democratic primary overwhelmingly. Asked to respond to the “uncommitted” votes, here’s what Landrieu had to say: We’re going to continue to talk to them. We’re going to continue to listen to what it is that they have to say. When you’re the commander in chief and when, in fact, you are representing the United States’ interests, there are no issues that are easy. And this is obviously a very painful issue for them and for lots of other folks in the United States of America. We’re going to continue to talk to them and then ask them to think about the choices and what the consequences are about electing somebody who wants to have a Muslim ban, electing somebody who is going to be much, much worse than the difficult circumstances that we have right now. The president is going to reach out, we’re going to continue to listen, and he’s going to continue to work with them as we find an answer to this very difficult problem.
|
|
|
Post by Webster on Feb 29, 2024 17:32:48 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Donald Trump’s latest ballot headache is in Illinois, where a judge ordered his name removed yesterday on 14th amendment grounds. The Guardian’s Rachel Leingang reports that he is appealing the ruling: Donald Trump has appealed a decision from an Illinois state judge who decided he should be removed from that state’s ballot because of the 14th amendment, an ongoing issue for Trump in the courts.
Tracie Porter, the Cook county circuit judge, made the decision on Wednesday, reversing the previous decision by the Illinois state board of elections, which said Trump could stay on the ballot. The order was put on hold pending an appeal from Trump, which came swiftly on Thursday.
The Illinois decision came after the Colorado supreme court ruled similarly, saying Trump couldn’t hold office again because he had participated in an insurrection while an officer of the United States. Another decision in Maine, by the state’s secretary of state, decided to keep Trump off the ballot there as well, though that is now on hold.
The Colorado decision went before the US supreme court in February, which has yet to rule on the case, though the justices expressed a load of skepticism of the claims that Trump shouldn’t be allowed to run again.
|
|
|
Post by Webster on Mar 1, 2024 19:03:41 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Jim McBride, a 49-year-old voter from Centreville, Virginia, attended Nikki Haley‘s rally in Falls Church to talk to voters about the need to support Ukraine amid its war against Russia. McBride complimented Haley on her support of Ukraine aid, and he said rally attendees had been similarly receptive to his message as he handed out fliers saying, “What Would Reagan Do?” Asked about how foreign affairs would be affected if Donald Trump became president again, McBride said: He’s definitely not fighting for our national security interests. I hope he comes around. I guess I’ll leave the door open. But he really needs to condemn [Vladimir Putin] for the death of Alexei Navalny. He needs to speak out in support of Ukraine and show that he understands the value of Nato.In her remarks, Haley again attacked Trump for deriding Nato and warned that his foreign policy platform could cause war to spread further, potentially endangering American troops. -- Trump is going to side with Putin, who’s made no bones about the fact he wants to destroy America. And he’s going to side with him over our allies who stood with us after 9/11,” Haley said. “We have always got to grow the number of friends that we have. We’ve always got to focus on what it takes to prevent war. Every president should focus on preventing war.
|
|
|
Post by Webster on Mar 4, 2024 16:42:12 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Supreme court allows Trump to remain on Colorado's presidential ballotThe supreme court has allowed Donald Trump to remain on Colorado’s presidential ballot, rejecting a state supreme court decision barring him from the election because of his involvement in January 6. Ruling set to allow Trump to stay on ballots nationwideThe US supreme court’s unanimous ruling overturning a decision by Colorado’s top court that barred Donald Trump from the ballot for his involvement in January 6 will resolve the question of the former president’s ability to run for office nationwide. At issue was whether states could enforce section three of the 14th amendment to disqualify someone from running for federal office, such as the presidency. That part of the constitution has been cited by state-level judges, including in Colorado, who removed Trump from ballots in lawsuits brought by pro-democracy groups. In their decision, the US supreme court writes: We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency.
|
|
|
Post by Webster on Mar 4, 2024 16:46:29 GMT -5
(The Guardian) 'BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!' Trump says, after supreme court allows him to keep runningThe headline says it all. In a post on Truth Social following the supreme court’s unanimous ruling allowing him to remain on presidential ballots, Donald Trump said: BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!
|
|
|
Post by Webster on Mar 4, 2024 16:49:30 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Beneath the supreme court’s unanimous opinion on Donald Trump’s eligibility to run for president were deep fractures over how far the decision should go. We’ll start off with the majority’s view, which was signed onto by five of the court’s conservative justices – chief justice John Roberts and associate justices, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Fearing that allowing states to enforce the constitution’s disqualification clause would upend presidential elections, the opinion reads: An evolving electoral map could dramatically change the behavior of voters, parties, and States across the country, in different ways and at different times. The disruption would be all the more acute —and could nullify the votes of millions and change the election result – if Section 3 enforcement were attempted after the Nation has voted. Nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos - arriving at any time or different times, up to and perhaps beyond the Inauguration.
For the reasons given, responsibility for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates rests with Congress and not the States. The judgment of the Colorado Supreme Court therefore cannot stand.
|
|
|
Post by Webster on Mar 4, 2024 16:51:24 GMT -5
(The Guardian) No justices dissented from the opinion, but two concurrences were filed. The first is by Amy Coney Barrett, a Donald Trump-appointed conservative. She criticizes the majority’s opinion for, essentially, overreaching on a sensitive subject at a sensitive time, by deciding Congress must enforce the constitution’s disqualification clause: This suit was brought by Colorado voters under state law in state court. It does not require us to address the complicated question whether federal legislation is the exclusive vehicle through which Section 3 can be enforced.
The majority’s choice of a different path leaves the remaining Justices with a choice of how to respond. In my judgment, this is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency. The Court has settled a politically charged issue in the volatile season of a Presidential election. Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up. For present purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home.
While no members of the court’s three-justice liberal minority dissented, they make clear in their concurrence that they aren’t happy with the conclusion reached by the majority. They open with a quote from the conservative chief justice John Roberts’s concurrence in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the 2022 decision that overturned Roe v Wade and allowed states to ban abortion, where he writes: “If it is not necessary to decide more to dispose of a case, then it is necessary not to decide more.” The liberals argue that the majority weighed in on more issues than were necessary in their ruling keeping Trump on the ballot: Today, the Court departs from that vital principle, deciding not just this case, but challenges that might arise in the future. In this case, the Court must decide whether Colorado may keep a Presidential candidate off the ballot on the ground that he is an oathbreaking insurrectionist and thus disqualified from holding federal office under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Allowing Colorado to do so would, we agree, create a chaotic state-by-state patchwork, at odds with our Nation’s federalism principles. That is enough to resolve this case. Yet the majority goes further. Even though “all nine Members of the Court” agree that this independent and sufficient rationale resolves this case, five Justices go on. They decide novel constitutional questions to insulate this Court and petitioner from future controversy … Although only an individual State’s action is at issue here, the majority opines on which federal actors can enforce Section 3, and how they must do so. The majority announces that a disqualification for insurrection can occur only when Congress enacts a particular kind of legislation pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. In doing so, the majority shuts the door on other potential means of federal enforcement. We cannot join an opinion that decides momentous and difficult issues unnecessarily, and we therefore concur only in the judgment.
|
|
|
Post by Webster on Mar 4, 2024 17:01:18 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Trump's Republican allies cheer supreme court ruling allowing him back on ballotsDonald Trump’s many Republican allies in Congress welcomed the supreme court’s ruling allowing him to continue his run for president. Here’s speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a leader of the failed effort to get the supreme court to block Joe Biden’s election victory in 2020: Today, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed what we all knew: the Colorado Supreme Court engaged in a purely partisan attack against the frontrunner for the Republican presidential primary. States engaging in the same activist, undemocratic behaviors should take notice and leave it to the American people to decide who will be president.And New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a member of House Republican leadership who is also seen as a potential running mate for Trump: Today’s unanimous 9-0 Supreme Court decision is a victory for the American people, the Constitution, and our Republic. As I have said since the start, extreme Democrats will shred the Constitution in order to prevent the American people from exercising their constitutional right to vote for President Donald Trump. This dangerous attempt by the radical Left to suppress votes was fundamentally unAmerican and why I was proud to sign on to the amicus brief to the Supreme Court. We the people decide elections, not unelected radical leftists.Finally, Jim Jordan, the Ohio congressman and chair of the House judiciary committee who has used the committee’s powers to pursue Joe Biden and his officials: Big win for common sense and democracy!
|
|
|
Post by Webster on Mar 4, 2024 17:03:23 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Trump to speak at Mar-a-Lago after supreme court allows him to remain on ballotsDonald Trump is expected to soon deliver remarks from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after the supreme court this morning overturned a Colorado ruling that removed him from the presidential ballot. The court’s unanimous decision is expected to allow him to remain on primary and general election ballots nationwide and thwart a legal campaign to remove him over his participation in the January 6 insurrection. Trump thanks supreme court for turning down challenge to candidacy, calls decision 'very well crafted'Donald Trump is now delivering a meandering speech at Mar-a-Lago, where he has cheered the supreme court ruling allowing him to stay on presidential ballots, while also issuing familiar denunciations of the criminal cases against him. At the start of his remarks, the former president thanked the supreme court, saying the decision was “very well crafted. And I think it will go a long way toward bringing our country together, which our country needs. And … they worked hard.”
|
|
|
Post by Webster on Mar 4, 2024 17:04:50 GMT -5
(The Guardian) US vice president Kamala Harris is due to meet in Washington later this afternoon with Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz, a centrist and key rival to the hard right prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The meeting is due to take place at 3pm ET and comes a day after Harris, who was in Alabama for the Bloody Sunday anniversary, urged an “immediate ceasefire” and bluntly called out Israel for not doing enough to ease a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. Gantz is defying Netanyahu’s wishes in his visit to the US and sit-downs with leaders. He also plans to meet up with secretary of state Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan. Joe Biden has been at Camp David since the weekend, hunkered down as he prepares this Thursday’s mega-high stakes State of the Union address.
Kamala Harris took some reporters’ questions in Washington, DC, moments ago as she headed for her meeting with Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet member and prominent centrist rival of right-wing prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Asked by reporters about her pending message to Gantz, she said they would discuss getting the hostage deal done, getting more aid in to Gaza and “getting that six-week cease-fire”, the pool report said. “The president has been an extraordinary leader in getting us to this point that we have the six-week deal,” she said, adding, in response to a question about whether there is any difference between her and Joe Biden’s stance on these issues right now: “The president and I have been aligned and consistent from the very beginning.” The White House has just issued an additional statement that talks with Gantz will focus on a deal to bring remaining hostages held by Hamas in Gaza to safety, and more progress in delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
|
|
|
Post by Webster on Mar 5, 2024 17:59:33 GMT -5
(The Guardian) While a lot of attention is on Super Tuesday voting, talks are still underway in Egypt for a potential temporary ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza and the international criminal court in The Hague, Netherlands, has issued arrest warrants for two senior Russian military figures accused of being responsible for a missile campaign targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure between October 2022 and March 2023, two years into Russia’s war on Ukraine. Our colleagues are following all of that news via stories and live blogs. Right now we have global live blogs running out of London on the latest situation in the Middle East, which you can follow here, and between Ukraine and Russia, here. In the US, NBC now reports that strong comments US vice president Kamala Harris has made in the last 48 hours, calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and decrying the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza would have been even stronger if she’d had her way. Harris met with Benny Gantz in Washington, DC, yesterday, a member of the Israeli war cabinet and a centrist rival of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in the US over Netanyahu’s objections.
|
|
|
Post by Webster on Mar 6, 2024 12:23:47 GMT -5
note: 2024 Super Tuesday thread can be found here(The Guardian) David Smith was in Palm Beach, Florida for the Guardian to watch Donald Trump give his victory speech. Here is an extract from his analysis: This was Trump as Eeyore. No balloons, no confetti, no parade of family members on stage and no mention of opponent Nikki Haley. No fun.
“Some people call it an experiment – I don’t call it an experiment,” Trump said of the United States. “I just say this is a magnificent place, a magnificent country, and it’s sad to see how far it’s come and gone … When you look at the depths where it’s gone, we can’t let that happen. We’re going to straighten it out. We’re going to close our borders. We’re going to drill baby drill.”
He has upended and inverted yet another political convention: optimism. Not for him Ronald Reagan’s morning in America or Bill Clinton’s place called Hope or Barack Obama’s yes, we can. Instead only murder, mayhem and total darkness.
If only he had still been running things, he lamented, Russia would not have invaded Ukraine, Israel would not have been attacked and Iran would be broke. Now inflation is “destroying the middle class, it’s destroying everything”.
“Our cities are being overrun with migrant crime, and that’s Biden migrant crime,” Trump grimaced. “But it’s a new category and it’s violent, where they’ll stand in the middle of the street and have fistfights with police officers. And if they did that in their countries from where they came, they’d be killed instantly. They wouldn’t do that. So the world is laughing at us. The world is taking advantage of us.”
|
|
|
Post by Webster on Mar 6, 2024 12:28:42 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Nikki Haley to pull out of presidential race – reportsThe Wall Street Journal is reporting that Nikki Haley is to pull out of the 2024 presidential election race. It says the candidate is expected to make a brief appearance at 10am ET (3pm GMT). Haley has won only two primaries – the District of Columbia and Vermont – during her campaign. Quoting “people familiar with her plans”, the paper reports: Haley won’t announce an endorsement Wednesday, the people said. She will encourage Donald Trump, who is close to having the delegates needed to win the GOP nomination, to earn the support of Republican and independent voters who backed her. She is expected to emphasize that she will continue to advocate for the conservative domestic and foreign policies she supports and caution against some of the dangers, such as isolationism and a lack of fiscal discipline, that she sees coming from Washington.
In its report claiming that sources familiar with the matter have told the Wall Street Journal that Nikki Haley is to pull out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, the paper offers a snap analysis, with John McCormick writing: Haley was the first major candidate to challenge Trump for the nomination and the last to stand down, showing determination even as she came under significant attack by the former president and his supporters.
As she exits the race, it is hard to know whether Haley is part of the party’s future or a last gasp of more traditional Republicanism that favors a hawkish foreign policy, fiscal discipline and limited government.
The 52-year-old could still have a future in presidential politics, but her sharp criticism of Trump in the final two months of her campaign will likely make that challenging while he still has a hold on the party.Super Tuesday was always seen as likely to make or break her campaign. She has lagged badly behind Donald Trump in Republican polling, and yesterday she won just 43 of the Republican delegates available, while Trump emerged with 764.
|
|