Category Archives: Democrats

More than one-third of Americans believe Israel is committing genocide, poll shows

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Poll released Wednesday shows divisions by age and political lines, with 35% overall saying campaign against Palestinians is genocide

More than one in three Americans believe Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, a poll published on Wednesday has found.

According to the Economist/YouGov poll, roughly equal numbers of adults believe Israel’s military campaign against Palestinians, which is estimated to have killed more than 25,000 people since 7 October, amounts to genocide: 35% say it is, 36% say it isn’t, with 29% undecided.

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Trump-Biden rematch increasingly inevitable after New Hampshire primary

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Ex-president in strong position to seize Republican nomination after sweeping first two contests of 2024 primary season

A sweep of the first two nominating contests on the 2024 primary season left Donald Trump in a strong position to seize the Republican party nomination, and made a rematch with Joe Biden even more inevitable.

Trump’s Republican rival, Nikki Haley, vowed to fight on despite her second place finish in New Hampshire, a state where she had hoped for an upset, and her third place finish in the Iowa caucuses. But she faces long odds. There is no precedent for a candidate winning the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary and losing their party’s nomination.

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Joe Biden wins New Hampshire’s Democratic primary with write-in votes

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Incumbent refused to campaign in the state and had to rely on write-in campaign powered by his allies and surrogates

Joe Biden has won New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary, even though the incumbent refused to campaign in the state and had to rely on a write-in campaign powered by his allies and surrogates to secure a victory.

Leading up to election day in New Hampshire, much more attention was paid to the Republican presidential primary, in which Donald Trump easily defeated Nikki Haley. But the results of the Democratic primary could provide additional clues about the general election in November.

Trump wins Republican primary in New Hampshire

Key dates for the 2024 election

Who’s running for president? The full list of candidates

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New Hampshire primary: Biden warns US democracy at stake as Trump races closer to Republican presidential nomination – as it happened

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We are a ways out from the 5 November election itself, but after today’s primary in New Hampshire the election events start coming thick and fast until we reach Super Tuesday on 5 March. If you need it, here is a handy timeline of how the process unfolds throughout the year.

Former US secretary of labor Robert Reich has written for the Guardian today, and is scathing about what he says is the way that the media are making a big deal of Trump’s performance in the campaign so far:

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OpenAI bans bot impersonating US presidential candidate Dean Phillips

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Company removes account of developer saying ChatGPT bot violated policies on political campaigning

OpenAI has removed the account of the developer behind an artificial intelligence-powered bot impersonating the US presidential candidate Dean Phillips, saying it violated company policy.

Phillips, who is challenging Joe Biden for the Democratic party candidacy, was impersonated by a ChatGPT-powered bot on the dean.bot site.

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John Lewis review: superb first biography of a civil rights hero

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With In Search of the Beloved Community, Raymond Arsenault delivers a fitting tribute to the late Democrat from Georgia

John Lewis: In Search of the Beloved Community chronicles one man’s quest for a more perfect union. An adventure of recent times, it is made exceptional by the way the narrative intersects with current events. It is the perfect book, at the right time.

Raymond Arsenault also offers the first full-length biography of the Georgia congressman and stalwart freedom-fighter. The book illuminates Lewis’s time as a planner and participant of protests, his service in Congress and his time as an American elder statesman.

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Roger Stone should be prosecuted, says Democrat he allegedly threatened to kill

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Eric Swalwell calls for action against Trump ally apparently recorded saying congressman or colleague ‘has to die’

The California Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell has called for the rightwing activist and Trump ally Roger Stone to be prosecuted over an alleged death threat he also made against Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York.

Asked by Scripps News if he wanted Stone to be prosecuted, Swalwell said: “Yes, I absolutely do. I know [the] aim [of the threat] is to not just threaten and in this case take a specific action, but its aim is to silence Donald Trump’s critics.”

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Democrats seize on Iowa results to campaign on threats posed by Trump

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Kamala Harris reminds voters of Trump’s role in overturning Roe v Wade as unstated core of campaign is Biden can beat him again

Top Democrats did not react to Donald Trump’s crushing win in the Iowa caucuses on Monday with the dismay that might have been expected. Instead, the victory of the twice-impeached, 91-times criminally charged former president was heralded as an early beginning to the battle for the White House itself.

Called early, Trump’s victory came by 30 points over the hard-right Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, who edged the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley for second. Only one of 99 Iowa counties did not go for Trump: Johnson county, which includes the University of Iowa, was won by Haley, the relative moderate left in the race – by a single vote.

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‘This person should not be president’: Kamala Harris takes hits in book on Biden

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Hunter Walker and Luppe B Luppen, authors of The Truce, quote former staffers to vice-president in scathing assessment

Considering Kamala Harris’s fitness to take over from Joe Biden should the need arise, a top aide to the former California senator’s 2020 campaign said: “This person should not be president of the United States.”

The withering assessment, given after Harris was picked for vice-president in 2020, is reported in The Truce: Progressives, Centrists and the Future of the Democratic Party, by the reporters Hunter Walker and Luppe B Luppen. The book will be published in the US on 24 January 2024. The Guardian obtained a copy.

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Congress agrees on stopgap bill to fund federal government into March

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US media reports congressional leaders have agreed on a ‘continuing resolution’, which extends deadlines

US congressional leaders have agreed on a two-tranche stopgap spending bill to keep the federal government funded into March and avert a partial government shutdown starting late next week, US media reported on Saturday.

Politico, CNN and Punchbowl reported that congressional leaders have agreed on what is called a “continuing resolution” or “CR”, that would fund the government – extending two deadlines through 1 March and 8 March. The media outlets reported that House of Representatives Republicans will unveil the plan Sunday night.

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Hunter Biden offers to testify privately if House Republicans issue new subpoena

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President’s son switches gears and says he will speak to Congress members seeking to impeach his father

Hunter Biden offered on Friday to comply with any new subpoena and testify in private before House Republicans seeking to impeach his father over alleged but unproven corruption, an attorney for Joe Biden’s son said.

“If you issue a new proper subpoena, now that there is a duly authorised impeachment inquiry, Mr Biden will comply for a hearing or deposition,” Abbe Lowell wrote to James Comer and Jim Jordan, the Republican chairs of the oversight and judiciary committees.

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Fired-up Biden shows gloves are off in January 6 anniversary speech

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In address near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, US president tore into Donald Trump like never before, including calling him a ‘loser’

This time it’s personal. On Friday Joe Biden tore into his predecessor Donald Trump as never before. He brimmed with anger, disdain and contempt. He apparently had to stop himself from swearing. So much for “when they go low, we go high” – and plenty of Democrats will be just fine with that.

If Biden was seeking to jolt his half-conscious 2024 re-election campaign into life, this may have done the trick. The palpable loathing of Trump took a good 10 or 20 years off him. Keep hating like this and he might do a Benjamin Button all the way to election day.

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Biden accuses Trump of ‘assault on democracy’ and says ‘it’s what he’s promising for the future’ – as it happened

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We are going to hear a lot about January 6 at 3.15pm today, when Joe Biden marks the third anniversary of the deadly attack on the Capitol with a speech that doubles as the start of his presidential campaigning in 2024.

Republican presidential contenders, by contrast, tend to have little to say about the insurrection, even when asked directly. A questioner at CNN’s town hall in Iowa last night asked Ron DeSantis for his views on the attack, and the Florida governor responded with a brief condemnation, then changed the subject. Here’s the moment:

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Biden attacks Trump as grave threat to democracy in rousing 2024 speech

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On eve of January 6 anniversary, US president condemns likely rival and warns voters ‘democracy is on the ballot’ in November

A day before the third anniversary of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, Joe Biden delivered a pointed speech to warn voters against re-electing Donald Trump, criticizing the likely Republican presidential nominee as a fundamental threat to democracy in an attempt to shape the dynamics of the 2024 election.

“Today we’re here to answer the most important of questions: is democracy still America’s sacred cause?” Biden said. “Today, I make this sacred pledge to you: the defense, protection and preservation of American democracy will remain, as it has been, the central cause of my presidency.

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Democratic long-shot candidates to debate in New Hampshire – without Biden

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Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips will appear on stage together on 8 January, two weeks before state’s primary

The lonely political vigil of long-shot Democratic presidential candidates Marianne Williamson and Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips will be transformed on to the debate stage early next month in New Hampshire – without Joe Biden, who is neither on the state ballot nor agreeable to any debate interaction with competitors.

The debate between self-help author Williamson and Phillips is set to be held at the New England College on 8 January, and moderated by Josh McElveen, former political director of radio station WMUR, two weeks before the state holds its primary.

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Liars, expulsions and near-fistfights: Congress plumbs the depths in 2023

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From removing a House speaker and expelling an indicted member, it was not a great year for America’s representatives

Before House Republicans left for their holiday recess this month, they addressed one last matter of business. They did not take up an aid package for Ukraine or pass an appropriations bill to fully fund the government through the fiscal year.

The House chose instead to vote along party lines to formally authorize an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, even though Republicans have failed to uncover any proof that the president financially benefited from his family’s business dealings.

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Biden mulls border crackdown in face of Trump’s migrant-bashing rhetoric

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President faces pressure from Republican critics and Democratic allies as he struggles to address what both sides agree is a crisis

Heading into the heat of the 2024 election season, Joe Biden is weighing major changes to US immigration policy that would toughen border enforcement and address an issue that has emerged as one of the president’s biggest political vulnerabilities ahead of a likely rematch against his anti-immigration rival Donald Trump.

But it is also a risk for Biden, who entered the White House in 2021 promising to “restore humanity and American values to our immigration system” after Trump’s four-year crackdown on immigration.

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‘Sitting on a powder keg’: US braces for a year, and an election, like no other

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Amid fears of authoritarianism, oldest US president likely to face off against first president to be criminally charged

The 60th US presidential election, which will unfold in 2024, will be quite unlike any that has gone before as the US, and the rest of the world, braces for a contest amid fears of eroding democracy and the looming threat of authoritarianism.

It will be a fight marked by numerous unwanted firsts as the oldest president in the country’s history is likely to face the first former US president to stand trial on criminal charges. A once aspirational nation will continue its plunge into anxiety and divisions about crime, immigration, race, foreign wars and the cost of living.

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A split among Democrats may threaten ‘the Squad’ – and help Trump – in 2024

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Centrists are taking on progressives in upcoming House races, as some say they’re losing sight of the big picture

A looming clash between the centre and left of the Democratic party could unseat members of the “the Squad” of progressives and hand a gift to Donald Trump’s Republicans in the 2024 elections.

The war in Gaza has divided Democrats like no other issue and is likely to play a key role in party primaries that decide which candidates run for the House of Representatives.

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Bernie Sanders demands answers on Israel’s ‘indiscriminate’ Gaza bombing

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Senator introduces resolution to investigate ‘humanitarian cataclysm … being done with American bombs and money’

The US’s support for Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza is facing new scrutiny in Washington following a resolution by the independent senator Bernie Sanders that could ultimately be used to curtail military assistance.

It is far from clear whether Sanders has the support to pass the resolution, but its introduction in the Senate this week – by an important progressive ally of the US president Joe Biden – highlights mounting human rights and political concerns by Democrats on Capitol Hill.

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