USpolitics

“I didn’t leave the progressive movement; the progressive movement left me.”

WASHINGTON, June 6 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden is making a pitch for his re-election to Republicans who do not support their party's standard-bearer, Donald Trump, in November's election, a Biden campaign official said on Thursday.

Israel organized and paid for an influence campaign last year targeting U.S. lawmakers and the American public with pro-Israel messaging, as it aimed to foster support for its actions in the war with Gaza, according to officials involved in the effort and documents related to the operation.

President Biden’s poor polling numbers have raised questions about the possibility of a blowout victory by former President Trump in November, even as he grapples with his own political challenges in the wake of a conviction in a New York hush money trial.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/17713638

‘No way out without bloodshed’: the right believe the US is under threat and are mobilizing

““If we jail Trump, get rid of Maga, end the electoral college, ban voter ID, censor free speech, we’ll save democracy,” says one meme in a QAnon channel on Telegram that depicts Biden in a Nazi uniform with a Hitler mustache”

Apparently they at least understand their opponent’s view .

June 2 (Reuters) - Roughly a day since joining TikTok, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump had attracted 3 million followers on the short video social media platform that he tried to ban as president on national security grounds.

Trump campaign touts smashing single-day fundraising record in the first 6 hours after the former president's conviction in his criminal trial

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd said this weekend that her sister is backing former President Trump’s reelection bid following the guilty verdict in the New York hush money criminal trial.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Friday sent Netanyahu a formal invitation to speak during a joint meeting of Congress, and the invitation featured the signatures of all four Congressional leaders: Johnson, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).

Republican Gov. Phil Scott allowed the bill to become law without his signature late Thursday, saying he is very concerned about the costs and outcome of the small state taking on “Big Oil” alone in what will likely be a grueling legal fight. But he acknowledged that he understands something has to be done to address the toll of climate change.

Under the legislation, the Vermont state treasurer, in consultation with the Agency of Natural Resources, would provide a report by Jan. 15, 2026, on the total cost to Vermonters and the state from the emission of greenhouse gases from Jan. 1, 1995, to Dec. 31, 2024. The assessment would look at the affects on public health, natural resources, agriculture, economic development, housing and other areas. The state would use federal data to determine the amount of covered greenhouse gas emissions attributed to a fossil fuel company.

The American Petroleum Institute, the top lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, has said it’s extremely concerned the legislation “retroactively imposes costs and liability on prior activities that were legal, violates equal protection and due process rights by holding companies responsible for the actions of society at large; and is preempted by federal law.” It also said in a letter to lawmakers before the bill became law that the measure does not provide notice to potential affected businesses about the size of the potential fees.

"This was intentional," said U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib. "You don't accidentally kill massive amounts of children and their families over and over again and get to say, 'It was a mistake.'"

President Biden goes by “Scranton Joe,” he references Pennsylvania often in speeches and his campaigns have spent millions of dollars there in political ads.

In 2020, the president set up his campaign headquarters in Philadelphia — before the COVID-19 pandemic — and he visited the state more than any other battleground that cycle.

A Muhlenberg College poll of voters in the state out earlier this month showed Trump leading Biden 44 percent to 41 percent in a head-to-head match-up. The previous survey done by the college showed Biden ahead by 42 percent to 41 percent.

“The most loyal Democratic voters — and the share we see within that group — is lower than what we have traditionally seen and that’s very problematic for Biden,” Borick said.

“They left me because they just couldn’t take a risk on me, because as a woman, I’m supposed to be perfect,” Clinton said in an interview with The New Times, published Saturday. “They were willing to take a risk on [former President Trump] — who had a long list of, let’s call them flaws, to illustrate his imperfection — because he was a man, and they could envision a man as president and commander in chief.”

“Is there a double standard? One hundred percent times 100 percent,” Tracy Sefl, a Democratic consultant and Clinton surrogate, said at the time. “And God forbid if she coughs.”

In the interview with the Times, Clinton also went after members of her party for what she said was a long-term failure in not shoring up abortion rights. She argued that Democrats didn’t fully estimate the power of anti-abortion powers until most of them were “taken by surprise” with the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, which ended the federal right to abortion access.

The battle lines over free speech on college campuses were largely entrenched before pro-Palestinian encampments rapidly spread across the country last month.

This left conservative voices on campus and in Congress positioning themselves as the defenders of free speech and, somewhat paradoxically, champions of liberal values around the need for open debate in America’s bastions of higher learning.

In recent months, however, House hearings about college campuses have focused instead on various ways to suppress speech deemed antisemitic or “pro-Hamas” — as protesters rail against U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza, as well as the Zionist movement they blame for the historical oppression of Palestinians.

“For a decade, conservatives have been crying foul on that,” Morey said of curbing free speech. “Until you get to post-October 7. And now people are saying ‘From the river to the sea’ or ‘Intifada’ or ‘Free Gaza’ — and a certain crop of conservatives don’t like that. And now suddenly, we have found their free speech limit. They don’t really mean ‘free speech,’ they mean ‘free speech until it’s speech I don’t like.’”

Lawler said slogans such as “From the river to the sea” were clearly antisemitic threats that should not be allowed. But Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), who has also proposed legislation to crack down on anti-Jewish hate speech, said such slogans were protected in her view.

“We’ve seen Jewish students in the encampments who held Shabbat services and Passover Seders with their peers,” said Beth Miller, political director at Jewish Voice for Peace Action, which has helped organize cease-fire protests. “It is not antisemitic to criticize the Israeli government or to protest complicity in genocide.”

“There’s not an armed insurrection where one side is seeking to overthrow another and engages in any means necessary. This is a protest on a college campus in the United States of America. I think it’s entirely possible to proceed with one’s objectives without crossing the line into rhetoric that is either dangerous or antisemitic.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15781650

‘A deranged fringe movement’: what is Maga communism, the online ideology platformed by Tucker Carlson?

Almost 6 in 10 likely voters surveyed — 58 percent — said they were “concerned” about a second Trump term after hearing about the former president’s reported offer to undo broad swaths of President Biden’s climate policies, according to polling by Data for Progress and Climate Power.

The group’s new poll surveyed 1,231 likely voters from May 10-13, with a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Seven in 10 voters in a new poll want to see third-party and independent candidates in presidential debates this cycle, as President Biden and former President Trump prepare to go head-to-head.

The latest Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found 79 percent of voters want Biden and Trump to debate, while 71 percent think those debates should include candidates from outside the major parties if they clear a viable threshold — with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. listed as an example of one such candidate.

Seven in 10 voters in the poll also say they’ve made up their mind about who they’ll vote for in the fall — but half of independents say they’re still undecided, which could have an impact in what’s gearing up to be a competitive race.

The survey was conducted from May 15-16 among 1,660 registered voters by The Harris Poll and HarrisX. The margin of error for the total sample is plus or minus 2 percentage points.

In the latest NH Journal/Praecones Analytica poll, released Monday, Trump received 36.6 percent support, compared to Biden’s 36.5 percent. Kennedy followed the presumptive party nominees in a not-so-distant third place, with 14.6 percent of the vote.

“In comparison to exit polls from the 2020 presidential election, independent/undeclared voters in New Hampshire demonstrate significantly lower support for Biden, as Biden won around 60 percent of these voters in 2020, compared to around a quarter if the election were held today,” he added.

The results come as Biden is slated to travel to New Hampshire this week to campaign.

The poll, conducted between May 15-20, included 862 registered New Hampshire voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.33 percentage points.

• Jared Bernstein, Joe Biden's Chief Economist, faced difficulties explaining money's workings in a documentary or 'Finding The Money,' despite his role.
• He stumbled through concepts, highlighting the confusion around government money printing and borrowing
• Bernstein, who is head of the US Council of Economic Advisers, is not formally trained in economics and appeared bewildered in the clip