Labour’s election campaign received rousing support from American progressive champion Bernie Sanders on Thursday at the start of a three-day UK speaking tour which he hopes will help galvanise the British left.
Drawing parallels between anti-establishment anger at both ends of the political spectrum in Britain and the US, the former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination also applauded Jeremy Corbyn’s efforts to reshape the Labour party.
“What has impressed me – and there is a real similarity between what he has done and what I did – is he has taken on the establishment of the Labour party, he has gone to the grassroots and he has tried to transform that party … and that is exactly what I am trying to do,” said Sanders.
“I am also impressed by his willingness to talk about class issues,” he added during a sold-out speech at the Brighton festival. “Too many people run away from the grotesque levels of income and wealth inequality that exist in the United States, the UK and all over the world. We will never make the kind of changes we need unless we take on the levels of inequality that exist.”
The comments are the most extensive yet linking the two movements, though Sanders stressed that his remarks should not been seen as a formal endorsement, arguing that this would be inappropriate behaviour for a foreign politician at this time.
“I don’t think Jeremy Corbyn needs my advice,” said the Vermont senator. “I think he is doing quite well. Nor do the people of the UK need my advice on who to vote for. I think they understand. But I have been very impressed by the campaign that he has been running and I wish him the very best.”
“These problems are not unique to the US,” he said. “Globalisation has left far too many people behind. Workers all over the world are seeing a decline in their standard of living. Unfettered free trade has allowed multinational corporations to enjoy huge profits and make the very rich even richer while workers are sucked into a race for the bottom.”
“These are not American issues, or British issues – these are international issues,” Sanders went on. “Our job is to create economies that work for working people – that uplift the poor, not make the very richest almost unbelievably rich while leaving everyone else behind. This is a global issue and we must address it.”
The senator, who stepped off the plane only shortly before speaking, did not address UK policy issues directly, sticking mainly to the themes of his 2016 campaign speech, but he inadvertently struck a chord with many in the room by describing the problems of students in the US.
“How insane is it that we are telling people that they are going to have pay off debt for decades for the crime of getting an education?” said Sanders, without referencing Labour’s own plan to abolish tuition fees.
As he spoke, news of Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Paris climate change agreement was relayed to the audience, something Sanders described as an “international embarrassment”. “Trump’s views do not reflect the views of the majority of the people in the United States,” he said, trying to reassure the audience.
“What I think Brexit was about was a lot of people who felt left behind by the global economy and their voices and their pain was not being heard,” he said. “What upset me was the Democratic party more or less ignored that reality. What Democrats have got to do is to have the courage to look at that pain.
“Trump understood that reality and spoke to that reality. Unfortunately, he lied, but that reality exists. It wasn’t so much that he won the election; it was that the Democrats lost the election.”
Bernie Sanders has accused Hillary Clinton of encouraging Islamic extremism in Libya, in a prelude to a Democratic debate on Saturday during which he is expected to go on the attack for the first time over the unintended consequences of the former secretary of state’s more interventionist foreign policy.
Speaking to the Guardian in an extensive pre-debate interview, the senator from Vermont criticised Clinton for carelessly fomenting regime change in Libya “without worrying” about the ensuing instability that has helped Islamic Stateforces take hold in the country.
“Regime change without worrying about what happens the day after you get rid of the dictator does not make a lot of sense,” Sanders said.
“I voted against the war in Iraq ... Secretary Clinton voted for that war. She was proud to have been involved in regime change in Libya, with [Muammar] Gaddafi, without worrying, I think, about what happened the day after and the kind of instability and the rise of Isis that we have seen in Libya.”
Many of his supporters have become frustrated at what they see as a reticence by Sanders to attack Clinton’s record directly, particularly after he appeared to be a reluctant participant in foreign policy discussions that dominated the second debate, held in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks.
Though initially reluctant to let foreign policy distract from what he considers a more important domestic agenda, the Sanders campaign increasingly sees his opponent’s hawkishness as an opportunity for him to turn Saturday’s debate in New Hampshire into a clash on the best way of achieving lasting national security.
“We have to be smart and not just tough,” he said. “And that means it’s not just destroying Isis, it’s making sure we do it in a way that leads to a better future and more stability in that region. And that means, absolutely in my view, that it cannot simply be as we did in Iraq ... It cannot simply be unilateral American action. What it means is a broad coalition, in which the troops on the ground are Muslim troops.”
He also turned on Republicans and hawks in the Democratic party for not heeding the lessons of recent US intervention in the Middle East.
“Sometimes in our country, especially among our Republican friends who suffer from amnesia, we forget what happened yesterday,” added Sanders. “I can remember like it was yesterday, when we had a ‘tough’ president. George W Bush, and his vice-president was even tougher. So tough! And they went into Iraq, man, and they got rid of Saddam Hussein, terrible guy. But they forgot to be thinking about what happens the day after you get rid of Saddam Hussein. What has happened in that region, as everybody knows, is there is massive instability, human tragedies beyond belief: in terms of people in that region, in terms of American soldiers, there is PTSD, traumatic brain injury, 6,700 dying.”
Sanders concedes that his vision of the US playing a supporting role in the fight agaisnt Isis rather than leading intervention is close to that of President Obama, but argues a tougher approach with Arab allies in the region is needed.
“The area that I would be a little bit different from Obama is I would put more pressure on Saudi Arabia, on Qatar, which happens to be per capita the wealthiest country on earth,” he said during Tuesday’s interview in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
He also blasted the impatience among many to provide glib reassurance to Americans in the face of complex and unpredictable domestic terror threats.
“Any idiot, especially one who is prepared to die, who has a gun, can start shooting up people,” added the Vermont senator. “Can I guarantee you, can you guarantee me that this will not happen? Nobody can.”
Though foreign policy has become a growing part of the senator’s campaign stump speech in recent days, he has largely avoided talking about gun control – an area where Clinton argues his record as a rural state senator is weak.
“I happen to believe that certain types of assault weapons, which are manufactured and designed for military purposes to kill people very quickly, should not be used in civilian society,” he said.
“There is a gun show loophole, which says you can circumvent the background check by going to a gun show and getting guns. We have to deal with that ... I believe we have to deal with what is called the strawman provision, which means that you can walk in and legally buy a gun and then sell it to him who is a criminal.”
Though less sweeping than many in the party would like, Sanders argues there is more practical chance of achieving political support for such measures.
“That is a broad consensus,” added Sanders. “That is what I believe, what I have voted for. It is not very different from what Hillary Clinton or anybody else believes. But politics being what it is, they saw that as a vulnerability of mine because I come from a state that doesn’t have any gun control but I think we’re handling it fine now.”
On other issues, Sanders said that Clinton has reluctantly moved closer to his position – arguing his campaign has achieved significant progress regardless of how it now fares in the party primary.“I think we have shifted the debate ... You are seeing Hillary Clinton and others beginning to move in our direction,” he said.
Sanders insists the differences between them remain “very significant”: “I was from day one in opposition to the Keystone pipeline. It took her a long time to come about. Trade policy is the same thing. So I think the differences between Secretary Clinton and myself are pretty profound. She has a Super Pac. I don’t have a Super Pac.”
He also draws new parallels with her husband’s record on Wall Street, where he wants to break up big banks and Clinton does not.
“I believe, during the 1990s, President Bill Clinton and the Republicans fought very hard to deregulate Wall Street, I led the opposition to that,” he said. “I did not think it was a good idea to allow investment banks, commercial banks and insurance companies to merge. My view today is that we have got to break up these huge institutions that have so much political and economic power.”
And the Vermont senator now seems increasingly willing to draw a public line between Clinton’s fundraising on Wall Street and her policies toward the economy as a whole.
“Ultimately the real issue is which candidate is prepared, frontally, to take on the billionaire class,” he said. “Can you receive huge amounts of campaign contributions from Wall Street and the wealthiest people in this country and say ‘Well, I’m going to really take them on’? The answer is no, you are not going to do that.”
A US supreme court justice has suggested that black students may benefit from the end of affirmative action admissions policies in US universities because many are “pushed ahead too fast” and should go to “lesser schools” instead.
The comments by Antonin Scalia came as conservatives on the court gave a sympathetic hearing to a white student who claims she was deprived of a place at the University of Texas due to her race.
Abigail Fisher graduated two years ago from Louisiana State University instead, but the court was warned that the number of minority students on US college campuses could “plummet” if her appeal against UT is successful – something Scalia suggested could be no bad thing.
“There are those who contend that it does not benefit African Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a slower-track school, where they do well,” he said.
“One of the [legal] briefs pointed out that most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas. They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re being pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them.”
Justice Scalia made clear he shared this view and also suggested these “lesser schools” suffered by having minority students admitted to unsuitable elite institutions.
“I’m just not impressed by the fact that the University of Texas may have fewer [black students if the admissions policy changes]. Maybe it ought to have fewer. And maybe, when you take more, the number of blacks, really competent blacks, admitted to lesser schools, turns out to be less,” he added. “I don’t think it stands to reason that it’s a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible.”
His claims were rejected by the university’s lawyer but received no comment from the rest of the bench, which includes one African American justice.
“I don’t think the solution to the problems with student body diversity can be to set up a system in which not only are minorities going to separate schools, they’re going to inferior schools,” said Gregory Garre, lawyer for the University of Texas.
“If this court rules that the University of Texas can’t consider race, we know exactly what will happen: diversity will plummet, especially among African Americans,” warned Garre.
“Now is not the time and this is not the case to roll back student body diversity in America,” he added, in apparent reference to a recent surge of concern about racial attacks on campuses such as the University of Missouri.
But chief justice John Roberts made clear he was impatient with the continued need for affirmative action in admissions policies.
“What unique perspective does a minority student bring to a physics class?” asked Roberts when presented with the argument that diversity was necessary to providing a better educational experience for all students. He also dismissed surveys designed to ask students how they felt as “sophomoric”.
The supreme court has previously allowed affirmative action in limited cases though has said it wanted to phase out because it was a form of racial discrimination.
Such programmes date back to the 1960s when they were first used to try to reduce racial segregation, but strict quotas were ruled unconstitutional by the court in 1978. Since another test case in 2003, race may now only be used as a factor if it can be shown to be essential in creating educational diversity in class.
In oral arguments on Wednesday, a narrow majority of conservative justices appeared sympathetic to the arguments put forward by Fisher’s lawyer that she was discriminated against.
Only eight justices heard the case as liberal stalwart Elena Kagan had to be recused due to her involvement at an earlier stage when she was a lawyer for the government.
Samuel Alito pressed the university to explain how it would meet court demands for affirmative action to be gradually phased out: “Are you going to hit the deadline? Is this going to be done in 12 years?”
Some of liberals warned the case could have dire consequences for diversity. “People in the universities are worried that we will kill affirmative action through a death by a thousand cuts,” said Stephen Breyer, who argued it was necessary to have a critical mass of minority students on campus.
“They are having racial incidents on campuses where students of colour are complaining that they feel isolated. What more do they need?” added justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was the only justice to support UT in the last case, expressed concern that aspects of another programme it uses to encourage diversity by taking the top 10% of high school applicants provided a “disincentive for minority students to step out and attempt to get into integrated schools”.
Sotomayor agreed that if the court insisted upon an impractically high bar for the use of affirmative action, it would force other universities to adopt such a method of selection too.
“I have a worry that if you are needing a proof of compelling reason, will any holistic review ever survive?” she said. “Will every school have to use the 10% plan?”
But lawyers for Fisher argued it was not up to them to provide an alternative. “Strict scrutiny is a heavy burden. There is no question. That is why it is called strict scrutiny,” said Bert Rein. “This is not easy to do, and it’s not our job to show them how to do it.”
He also claimed that the combination of the two schemes at the University of Texas Austin campus had driven white students into a minority.
“Today they are a majority minority campus – they really are – just because of the demographics,” claimed Rein.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is likely to hold the swing vote when the eight justices consider their decision next year, worried that more information was necessary to move on from the court’s earlier indeterminate decision. “We are just arguing the same case, it’s as if nothing has changed,” he said.
triding on stage to the triumphant strains of Nessun Dorma, Donald Trump has a surprisingly humble confession to make for someone defying all the laws of political gravity.
“Unless we win, it doesn’t mean a damn thing,” the would-be Republican presidential nominee warns a campaign rally in South Carolina, despite finishing his fourth month in a row at the top of the polls – even given a drop of 12 points after his latest controversial comments.
“I want to pick my date for the election. I want it next Tuesday,” he confides to an 11,000-strong crowd typical of the grassroots support that needs to flourish well into March for him to win the Republican nomination, let alone November’s general election.
Such moments of self-doubt are fleeting, however, quickly replaced by the now familiar bombast of a billionaire whose status as a “winner” has become his defining policy platform.
“Nobody has crowds like we have crowds,” he continues, back on message. “It’s a movement. It’s beyond anything.”
Trump is not the only one beginning to wonder whether this improbable campaign can confound the pundits and go the distance, particularly after a burst of recent controversy only seemed to cement his polling lead over his bewildered rivals.
Conventional wisdom holds that any one of Trump’s many outbursts would have sunk most politicians without a trace by now.
If POWs, Fox News and women were not enemies enough, Trump has also accused Mexican immigrants to the US of being rapists; claimed that a Black Lives Matter protester who was violently ejected from a rally deserved to be “roughed up”; appeared to mock a New York Times journalist for his disability and then accused the journalist of “grandstanding” on that disability in his response; falsely accused Muslim Americans of cheering on the 9/11 attackers; and agreed with suggestions that all such Muslims should have their names tracked on a database.
Trump has complained that many of these incidents were exaggerated by the political media, 70% of whom he says are “scum”. But he has nonetheless refused to retract any of the comments.
“I could have said ‘Oh, I misspoke’, but I am not big on that,” he told the crowd in South Carolina. “You have to be wrong.”
Some rivals still hope that eventually even Trump’s supporters will tire of what critics view as his relentless attacks on minorities in particular. Ohio governor John Kasich, for example, is running attack ads drawing inspiration from anti-Nazi Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller, whose updated refrain might begin: “First they came for the Mexicans …”
Others question whether there is much over-arching political ideology to Trump at all, as opposed to simple opportunism and a relish for making waves.
“He is an egomaniac, he’s a narcissist, he’s not a conservative, he’s not a liberal, he believes in himself,” former presidential rival Bobby Jindal told the Guardian shortly before dropping out of the race. “He’s not reflective of a coherent ideology, he’s for himself. He took Reagan’s slogan about making America great again, [but] he’s about making Donald Trump.”
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush has accused his nemesis of living in an “alternate universe” designed to “prey on people’s fears”.
Trump, though, seems to prefer the famous political dictum: “Never apologise. Never explain. Just get the thing done and let them howl.” He revels in his poll lead over Kasich and Bush in their home states as if that is all the answer that is needed.
After several weeks of this, other mainstream politicians are beginning to wonder whether howling is going to be enough to stop the Trump juggernaut; whether what started as an extension of Trump’s reality TV fame and scratching an anti-establishment itch has morphed into something far more persistent.
Liz Mair, a Republican strategist who is organising an anti-Trump fundraising committee, worries that many of the comments seen as a gaffes by the liberal media are in fact carefully designed to boost his standing with his core constituency.
“I personally think it’s best that people who don’t like Trump and his policies – whether it’s libertarians like me, establishment Republicans or real, rock-ribbed conservatives – effectively take out an insurance policy and do some work to try to actively undercut him,” she said. “And not just pray for him to commit real political suicide.”
Another well-connected New Hampshire Republican marvels at the political controversies that Trump has weathered.
“Just one of these flips flops, gaffes or lies, would have killed a capable, competent campaign,” he said. But, he added, “if your campaign is based on jumping the shark, there’s no jumping the shark moment”.
Yet there is more to Trump than attention-grabbing outrage. As he delights in telling his supporters, the three issues he rails against most – immigration reform, free trade deals and Barack Obama’s national security policy – have become perhaps the defining issues of the election.
“Who’s going to be best? Trump, Trump, Trump,” he bragged, to an answering chant from supporters that did nothing to dispel the fascistic overtones of Tuesday’s rally in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
His policies for deporting every undocumented immigrant in the US and demanding Mexico pay for a border wall – “A real wall. A very tall wall, taller than that ceiling” – might sound unrealistic, but they have arguably destroyed the campaign hopes of Bush, who favours immigration reform.
So what might it take to stop Trump?
The biggest source of optimism among opponents is the increasing belief that the polling on which Trump draws his confidence is profoundly flawed.
For starters, there is strong evidence that simple polls this far away from election day can be an average of eight percentage points out, simply because most people have not made up their mind.
Hype has also consistently run ahead of reality, a crucial factor for a candidate who relies on relentless media coverage to overshadow his opponents.
Before announcing that he was running, Trump was polling at just 2% but receiving 4% of all media coverage. A small enough gap. But immediately after his announcement, while Trump’s support had climbed to 11%, the media was dedicating 20% to 30% of candidacy headlines to one candidate.
Polls that just ask whether people think Trump is likely to win, rather than whether they would actually vote for him, again show the gap between expectations and reality. Many surveys do not adjust for low turnout levels in primary elections either.
Among Americans who identify as Republicans, polls suggest Trump has 25% to 30% of the vote. A survey from Pew Research conducted at the end of September provided more detail about who those individuals are: they are likely to be less educated and less affluent compared to the support base of other candidates.
Yet Trump’s support base could be problematic on election day. In 2008, Americans who didn’t graduate from college were significantly less likely to register to vote compared to those who did graduate.
It does look like Trump supporters tend to be less educated. But the more detailed the demographic data, the less reliable it is, given that pollsters arestruggling to find representative samples of Americans to talk to them.
Those demographics might also explain why college-educated pundits underestimated Trump’s support. There is another cognitive bias, one called “the curse of knowledge”, whereby better informed people find it difficult to view problems from the perspective of others who don’t have the same information.
Converting such passionate supporters will be hard. To immediately blunt Trump’s lead, another candidate would need to tap into his support base without jeopardising their own. Polling experts believe this to be unlikely, as it is hard to imagine anyone doing Trump better than Trump, let alone anyone doing Trump without sacrificing their own support.
A far more likely outcome is that Trump’s base remains solid but his relative lead slowly declines as voters coalesce around candidates such Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz. Insiders will become clearer frontrunners and the outsiders will fall behind once the excitement of Iowa or New Hampshire fades, perhaps leaving the real-estate mogul from New York looking as forgotten as winners in these early states in past elections, from Pat Robertson in 1988 to Mike Huckabee in 2008.
This threat can be best understood by looking at responses to the question: “Are there any of these candidates you would definitely not support for the Republican nomination for president?”
While 20%-30% of voters say they would support Trump, another 20%-30% say they definitely would not. Other candidates, like Cruz, aren’t quite so divisive (only 5%-10% say they definitely wouldn’t vote for him).
That means undecided voters are more likely to drift towards candidates other than Trump – a trend likely to be helped by sceptical party leaders who make up 7% of the deciding votes at the GOP national convention.
Prominent Iowa conservative Steve Deace is one of many who think Trump’s ultimate appeal will prove limited.
“Trump’s got a locked-in base no matter what he does,” he said. Deace, a vocal supporter of Cruz, compared Trump to former Texas congressman Ron Paul in that both candidates had “a high floor and a low ceiling”.
Trump’s antics are “both a good and a bad thing”, he argued. “On one hand, it produces a loyal following that is attracted to that persona which will not leave you. On the other hand, it limits your ability to grow beyond that.”
This was echoed by a strategist familiar with Trump’s campaign who believes the trend will eventually lead to a “death by a thousand cuts”.
“He has stable base of support but he can’t expand it and his state polls are not that good,” the strategist said. “I think frankly this harms him from being able to expand his support.”
And even if Trump’s comments don’t impact his campaign’s fortunes, they could hurt the Republican Party as a whole. Ashley Bell, a prominent black Republicanwho chairs the 20/20 Leaders of America, a group which promotes criminal justice reform on a bipartisan basis, said Trump had already gone “too far to be considered someone that the party can get behind and lead this party with a bigger tent than today”.
For now though, Trump seems to be defying the laws of political gravity and consistently maintaining a lead over a deeply fragmented Republican field.
A win in the Republican primary is far from out of the question. Betting markets put this at 7/1 currently. With a year to go, anyone who calls a Trump general election victory “impossible” should be treated with caution.
Top Republican pollster Frank Luntz suggests that, at this point, the only thing which could hurt Trump is if he is “shown to have hurt people who have worked for him … but his comments, as radical as they may be, won’t have much of an impact since the people supporting him agree with him”.
Luntz believes Trump speaks for voters who for the first time feel like they have a mouthpiece and like the fact that they feel they are being heard. As the well-respected pollster noted: “Trump says what they’re thinking and the more outrageous he is, the more they agree with him. He’s saying what no politician would say and that’s another reason that they like him.”
That is certainly the feeling among ordinary supporters who have attended his increasingly packed campaign events in recent months.
“I like the way he speaks,” said Sandra Murray of Dubuque, Iowa. “He speaks the truth, he speaks what people need to hear. He may be a little bold but you can’t sugar-coat things anymore. This country is a huge mess and we need to get out of this and honestly he could be the man to do it.”
Other supporters have a simpler attraction.
“Oh, I wish I had big nuts like him,” said Dino Rossi of Newton, Massachusetts. “He’s not afraid of anybody or anything, that’s pretty cool.”
Barack Obama has rejected a proposal from TransCanada to build the Keystone XL pipeline through the American heartland, the Guardian has learned, ending years of uncertainty about the project.
The US president made the announcement from the White House flanked by both secretary of state John Kerry and vice-president Joe Biden, declaring that Keystone “would not serve the national interests of the United States”.
Keystone XL was designed to pump crude from the Alberta tar sands for 1,700 miles and across six states to refineries on the Gulf coast. Over the years, the project has become a symbol of the greater political struggle surrounding Obama’s efforts to move away from fossil fuels and fight climate change.
But Obama said the project was neither “a silver bullet for the economy” nor “an express lane to climate disaster”. It would not meaningfully boost jobs or cut gas prices for US motorists, he said. And in a sweeping statement which became a global call to arms ahead of the UN climate talks starting in Paris later this month, he said it was time to stop using the argument over Keystone as a political cudgel.
The proposed route for the Keystone XL pipeline. Photograph: The Guardian
Highlighting US progress in moving away from reliance on fossil fuels, he promised US global leadership in pursuit of an ambitious framework “to protect the one planet we have got while we still can”.
Earlier this week, TransCanada asked the State Department to put its US permit application on hold, which marked a shift for a firm that had spent seven years relentlessly pushing for approval of the project.
Prospects for Keystone XL have been receding over the last year because of low oil prices, which made the project uneconomical, and amid political shifts in the US and Canada.
Jane Fleming Kleeb, founder of the Bold Nebraska coalition of citizens, farmers and ranchers opposed to the pipeline, told the Guardian: “It’s a long time coming. I feel like, honestly, the boots have beaten the big oil suits for the first time in the country’s history on a big major infrastructure project.
“I’m just proud, I can’t even believe it’s finally happening. The difference this time around was that farmers and ranchers were unified and stood up against the project – that made a huge difference. Something which would normally be decided in the halls of Congress was actually influenced by farmers and ranchers this time around.”
The battle for labor movement support among Democratic presidential candidates broke into the open on Tuesday with the launch of legislation by Senator Bernie Sanders protecting employees who seek to form unions.
Though the Workplace Democracy Act stands little chance of passing the current Republican-controlled Congress, it marks a new phase in the Sanders campaign’s effort to paint itself as the natural champion of organized labor.
The proposals to prevent workers from being victimized for attempting to form unions come amid growing union endorsements for Hillary Clinton and ahead of a White House “Worker Voice” summit on Wednesday which is expected to be attended by Vice-President Joe Biden.
Sanders rejected criticism that his support among unions was lower than he would have hoped, saying that members were backing him even if their leaders were influenced by personal ties to Clinton.
“We have a number of locals, we have the national nurses union and we are going to have a number of more unions on our side – no doubt about it,” the Vermont senator told reporters after a press conference on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
“What sometimes happens is that Secretary Clinton has had a number of contacts with union leaders over the years, but I have zero doubt that we have massive rank-and-file support among trade unionists.”
But Sanders also insisted his support for the legislation, which would strengthen the role of the National Labor Relations Board in certifying unions, long predated his interest in running for president.
“This is legislation that I have supported since literally the first year that I was in the Congress,” he said. “It’s not a question of winning union support. What we are fighting for is the survival of the American middle class.”
Some of the activists present at the legislation’s launch, which was co-sponsored by congressman Mark Pocan, said they had suffered victimization for trying to form unions.
“I was trying to organize nurses at Huntington Memorial hospital in Pasadena and going over some of the issues for patients caused by hospital administration’s budget cuts,” nurse Allysha Almada, told the Guardian. “I was quoted in an article … and within a week I was taken off the floor in front of all my co-workers, taken to HR and put on suspension.”
“It was clear retaliation for me being an outspoken supporter of the National Nurses United,” she added. “It definitely has a huge impact on our organization efforts and nurses are very afraid.”
Bernie Sanders received his first endorsement from a national trade union on Monday, throwing significant new organisational muscle behind a Democratic presidential candidate who is challenging Hillary Clinton’s natural support in the labour movement but lags far behind her in campaign infrastructure.
National Nurses United, which has 185,000 members nationally and is the profession’s largest representative, announced its backing for Sanders at a rally with him in Oakland, California.
The decision of its executive council to announce a formal endorsement follows a poll of members said to show widespread backing for his more radical policies on healthcare and social inequality.
Although the union is well-known as one of the more leftwing labor groups, its leaders claim to be surprised at the depth of support among their largely female membership given Clinton’s chance of becoming America’s first female president.
“When the pollsters said there was a landslide for Bernie Sanders, that didn’t make a lot of sense to me initially given the fact that Hillary Clinton is a woman,” director RoseAnn DeMoro told the Guardian in an interview ahead of the announcement. “I thought it would be fairly balanced, and it’s not.”
DeMoro would not disclose the internal polling numbers but said the three recent surveys represented a “pretty significant sampling” of the union’s members and she was “stunned at the level and depth of enthusiasm for Bernie”.
Until now, only one other national union, the American Federation of Teachers, has endorsed any of the Democratic candidates – coming out for Clinton in July – although some smaller, local union groups have shown support for Sanders.
Sanders thanked the nurses gathered at NNU headquarters, drawing on their experience of health inequality to reinforce his call for universal and affordable medical insurance.
“I applaud you; you work hard every day but you understand that we have to do more to provide quality care that people need and for you to do your jobs in the way you want to see,” said Sanders. “You do not want to see patients not being able to afford the prescription drugs being written. You do not want to see people hesitating to walk into an office because they don’t have health insurance or because the deductibles are too high.”
But he also received loud applause for regaling the nurses with portions of his stump speech that point to much grander ambition.
“Our campaign is about creating a political revolution that says to the billionaire class they can’t have it all; this country, our government, belongs to all of us,” said Sanders. “It’s important that we think big.”
“We have to change boldly and fundamentally the priorities of our nation so that every American can experience the right to live with dignity and not so that almost all of our wealth and income is going to the top one per cent,” he added.
Richard Trumka, president of the national labor federation AFL-CIO, recently organised candidate interviews for union leaders to help shape their decision on an overall endorsement by the US labour movement, something many still expect to go to Clinton.
But this is unlikely to come until much later in the primary race and Sanders’s success in securing the backing of an individual union will be seen by some supporters as a demonstration that the labor movement’s backing for Clinton is not a forgone conclusion.
DeMoro said the support of Sanders by nurses was particularly a sign of how strongly they felt about his policies on expanding the Medicare system to provide so-called “single-payer” health insurance – a similar system to Canada’s – for all Americans.
But she insisted that her largely apolitical membership was also drawn to his policies to reduce income inequality and tackle the impact of money on American politics.
“Nurses are an interesting group. They are not political scientists. They want to be nurses,” said DeMoro. “But nurses see the fall out of all the bad decisions, because everything ultimately equates to health. If you are talking about income inequality, they see it. Health concerns and disparity among classes, joblessness; every social problem basically ends up presenting itself in a healthcare setting.”
Sanders has attracted record-breaking crowds among grass roots supporters since declaring his candidacy for the Democratic nomination – including 19,000 in Portland on Sunday night – but he is seen by many in the party mainstream as too radical to get elected.
But DeMoro insisted he had a meaningful chance of becoming president and dismissed the concerns as a “self-fulfilling prophecy” by Democratic party leaders.
“I am not worried about the electability of Bernie Sanders,” she said. “I am worried about where this country goes if he doesn’t get elected.”
She also expressed regret that there was not more alignment between her unions’ interests and the policies of Clinton.
“It’s so fundamentally disappointing that we can’t have a female presidential candidate lined up with our values,” she said. “[But] what Bernie represents is social change and we are organisation dedicated that.”
DeMoro also criticised the Clinton campaign, which she claimed was holding back her more radical tendencies.
“I wanted the Hillary before the consultants go ahold of her campaign,” she said. “I sat in the AFL-CIO meeting and trying to nail her down was extremely difficult,” added DeMoro.
“She is very sophisticated, she is polished, and she can speak to the issues. But in terms where the commitments resting behind the discussion, they weren’t there.”
Ather mass shooting, another round of arguments about why gun reform is doomed to fail. Turns out, most of those arguments don’t hold up to scrutiny.
Myth #1: Gun control would never pass Congress.
A majority of US senators voted for a package of gun control measures only two years ago. The 54 who backed the bill, which was written by Republican Pat Toomey and Democrat Joe Manchin, included three other Republicans.
But when four Democrats got cold feet about their electoral chances in the midterms, the legislation fell short of the 60 votes it needed to prevent a filibuster.
Heading into the 2016 election, however, there are many more moderate Republican seats up for grabs – and a meaningful opportunity for Democrats to take back control of the Senate.
A successful bipartisan Senate bill and more persuasive president could be enough to encourage a future House speaker to allow a vote, too. It might even pass if the House remained in Republican control.
Support for universal background checks skyrocketed after the December 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, with 90% of Americans behind the proposal at its peak. More than two years later, polls continue to show strong support for expanding background checks, averaging 80%.
As a successful 2014 ballot initiative in Washington state proved, if you leave the decision in the hands of voters, they are more likely than politicians to vote for universal background checks.
Ironically, when Congress was weighing airstrikes in Syria in August 2013, just four months after the failed background checks vote, one of the foremost reasons lawmakers cited in opposing the Obama administration’s plan was polling that showed 90% of Americans were against intervention. It was a classic example of how Congress selectively listens to the American people – as in, whenever it’s more convenient.
Myth #3: Gun control won’t stop gun violence.
There are more than three times as many Americans killed by guns per capita than in any other wealthy nation, and more than ten times the rate in comparable larger countries such as Britain, France and Japan.
Many of these countries have similar problems with crime, drugs, urban deprivation and youth violence, others are more peaceful, but there is one simple thing that countries with less gun violence have in common with each other: they have fewer guns.
No one can predict the future of a more gun-constrained America with certainty, but the evidence from dozens of comparable societies points to a clear causal relationship between access to firearms and how often they are used.
Myth #4: Switzerland and Israel seem to do OK without gun control
Proponents of unfettered gun ownership often point to the example of Switzerland, which has a tradition of more widespread firearms ownership than most other European countries but is not known for its gun-ravaged inner cities.
One problem is the trend is not that different: more guns still lead to more shooting, just less so than in America. Switzerland is actually second among wealthy nations in terms of annual gun deaths (0.77 per 100,000 of population in one recent survey , versus 2.97 in the US and just 0.07 in England and Wales) but has barely half as many guns per 100 people (45.7 versus 88.8 in the US).
But even this comparison gets weaker if you look at the way the Swiss keep their guns, which stems from a tradition of military service that has been considerably tightened over the years. One US study by the National Institutes of Health points out that both Switzerland and Israel (another alleged exception to the rule touted as proof that guns don’t kill) actually limit firearm ownership considerably and require permit renewal one to four times annually.
Those are just the kind of gun control measures, in fact, that second-amendment fans in the US claim wouldn’t make any difference to gun violence.
Myth #5: Other countries are different.
Further rejoinders to the international-comparison argument are less empirical still, tending to rely on a mixture of American cultural exceptionalism, pioneer spirit and a history of racial tension to explain why murder rates are so high without blaming gun ownership.
While it is true that US history differs greatly from European history, this theory is less effective at explaining similar disparities with Canada and Australia.
Comparisons between similar large cities also belie the argument that there is something uniquely violent about America’s urban poor. London has gang violence, drugs and recent riots that make Ferguson and Baltimore look tranquil, yet the Metropolitan police estimate criminals have access to barely 100 guns in a city only slightly smaller than New York. Cities like Glasgow and Liverpool can be shockingly violent places but victims of knife attacks and beatings tend to survive.
It may be true that the link between guns and a culture of violence goes both ways, but that’s hardly a reason not to try tackle both at the same time.
Myth #6: US borders are too open.
Amid widespread concern over illegal immigration, much attention has also focused on the unique geography of the United States. It is true that the country has among the longest land borders in the world and is a very open international trading nation.
It is hard to imagine, however, the weapons would be anywhere near as easy for criminals to obtain if they all had to be smuggled through ports, airports or across the Mexican border. Even a small reduction in weapons falling into the wrong hands would also reduce the incentive for homeowners to store guns for self-defense.
Whether US port security or land borders would really prove that much more porous than other countries with stricter gun laws is also open to question, but it is strange this argument is rarely offered as a reason to give up on drug interdiction, or intercepting terrorist bomb threats.
Myth #7: Guns are essential for self-defense.
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun,” NRA president Wayne LaPierre infamously declared after the Newtown shooting.
According to the non-profit Violence Policy Center , there were just 258 “justifiable homicides” involving civilians using guns in 2012, as opposed to 8,342 criminal homicides committed with a firearm. “For every justifiable homicide in the United States involving a gun, guns were used in 32 criminal homicides,” the group said in a report, which is based on data from the FBI and Bureau of Justice.
And those figures do not even include an estimated 22,000 suicides and accidental shootings annually where guns are involved.
After Newtown, anti-gun violence groups actually raised more money. According to filings with the Federal Election Commission in 2014, gun control groups declared $21.3m in contributions since the November 2012 election, whereas gun rights’ groups raised $16.3m in the same period.
Americans for Responsible Solutions, the anti-gun violence group co-founded by former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, a Democrat who was shot in the head during the 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona, amassed a whopping $11 million in its first four months of existence.
Myth #9: Lawmakers will be voted out of office for supporting gun control.
In the 2014 elections, two governors who passed comprehensive gun control bills – Connecticut governor Dan Malloy and Colorado governor John Hickenlooper, both Democrats – were both re-elected despite the NRA’s best efforts to defeat them.
The gun control debate also had little effect on lawmakers who voted against stricter gun laws after Newtown. US senators Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mark Begich of Alaska – two of just four Democrats who joined Republicans in blocking a Senate bill to expand background checks – both lost their re-elections anyway.
Despite its pledge to reward politicians who stood up for gun rights, the NRA did nothing to help either senator. Money and grassroots support is also now on offer from groups like those backed by former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, that support gun control.
Myth #10: Mass shootings still happen in areas with strict gun laws, so gun control doesn’t work.
When a mass shooting occurred in Septemberg 2013 at the Navy Yard compound in Washington, one of the first arguments made by activists for gun rights was that gun control is clearly ineffective because DC has some of the strictest gun laws in the US.
The problem with this theory is that criminals also have access to cars, and can easily obtain firearms in neighbouring states or counties.
In the Navy Yard incident, the shooter legally purchased firearms in neighboring Virginia despite a criminal record and mental health issues – exposing gaps in the current background checks system. And cities like Chicago are plagued by the illegal trafficking of firearms; there is no current federal law that defines gun trafficking or straw purchasing as a crime.
Myth #11: Universal background checks would create a federal database of gun owners.
One of the myths that ended the background checks bill in the Senate two years ago was the claim – perpetrated by the gun lobby and swallowed by most Republicans – was that it would create a national registry of gun owners. In fact, the Manchin-Toomey legislation explicitly barred the creation of a federal database in its text, but opponents insisted it would infringe on the liberties of gun owners in America.
Aside from that being a false claim, it was notable that just a couple of months later, when it was revealed that the NSA was spying on millions of Americans, the same lawmakers were overwhelmingly supportive of far more intrusive data-gathering.
A woman will soon feature on US bank notes for the first time in 150 years after a successful campaign to celebrate the centenary of female suffrage. But the surprise decision comes with a catch: whoever is chosen will have to share the honour with a man.
Treasury secretary Jack Lew announced the process of redesigning the $10 bill late on Wednesday – less than a week after a high-profile petition was handed to Barack Obama calling on him to pick African-American slavery abolitionist Harriet Tubman.
The public campaign, which nominated the civil war heroine from a shortlist of 15 women, had suggested she replace president Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.
But officials have opted to redesign the $10 bill instead, currently occupied by the first treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton, and plan a public consultation exercise of their own before making a final decision on who should be the new woman on the note later this year.
Lew also revealed that when the first new bills are printed in 2020 – coinciding with the 100th anniversary of American women receiving the right to vote – they are likely to continue to feature Hamilton: either by also incorporating him in the new design, or by producing several versions.
Harriet Tubman won an online poll last month to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
“It was personally very important to me to make sure that as we make this decision we continue to honour Alexander Hamilton who played such a formative role in the creation our country, the establishment of democracy as we know it and the principle of the soundness of our currency,” Lew told reporters.
Nonetheless, the administration insists its surprise announcement is a “historic decision” in the normally conservative world of US currency production.
There are notes with a face value of $1.3tn in circulation around the world and more than a billion $10 notes alone are printed each year.
“With such a wide reach America’s currency makes a statement about who we are and what we stand for as a nation,” said the treasury secretary.
He also paid tribute to the campaign, which he said was as a “happy coincidence” with a separate decision to redesign the $10 bill to introduce new security features.
“The Women on 20s campaign reflects the best tradition of American democracy where people care about something, band together and express their views,” said Lew.
The theme of the next series of notes will “focus on celebrating a champion for our inclusive democracy”, said Lew – a criteria that may favour Tubman, who famously organised the “underground railroad” to smuggle slaves out of the south during the American civil war.
But if the three rounds of informal voting carried out by Womenon20s.org are indicative, the choice is likely to be a complex one with strong historical claims made for Eleanor Roosevelt and suffrage campaigner Susan B Anthony.
Anthony was also the first woman to feature on American coins after Jimmy Carter introduced a shortlived $1 coin in 1978.
Martha Washington, wife of the first US president, was on a dollar silver certificate in circulation from 1891 to 1896 and the legendary native American, Pocahontas, featured in a picture on the $20 note from 1865 to 1869.
Women On 20s founder Barbara Ortiz Howard said: “While many women are worthy of being featured, when secretary Lew makes his choice we hope he will take into account that the winner of our online poll, Harriet Tubman, was the top vote-getter among more than 600,000 ballots cast.
At a turning point in history where most of the male members of the US supreme court seemed unsure which way to turn, one justice stood out during Tuesday’s hearing on the constitutionality of gay marriage for her spatial awareness.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg has long been a liberal champion – dubbed ‘Notorious RBG’ by her younger fans – for her withering dissent from the court’s increasingly conservative consensus.
“Marriage today is not what it was under the common law tradition, under the civil law tradition,” said Ginsburg when Justices Roberts and Kennedy began to fret about whether the court had a right to challenge centuries of tradition.
“Marriage was a relationship of a dominant male to a subordinate female,” she explained. “That ended as a result of this court’s decision in 1982 when Louisiana’s Head and Master Rule was struck down … Would that be a choice that state should [still] be allowed to have? To cling to marriage the way it once was?”
“No,” replied John Bursch, the somewhat chastised lawyer for the states who are seeking to preserve their ban on gay marriage.
Bursch was similarly eviscerated by Ginsburg when he tried to argue that the sole purpose of marriage was to ensure a stable relationship for procreation.
“Suppose a couple, 70-year-old couple, comes in and they want to get married?” remarked the 82-year-old Ginsburg, to laughter, after a protracted debate over whether it was fair to ask couples if they wanted children before allowing them to wed.
“You don’t have to ask them any questions. You know they are not going to have any children.”
Conversely she came to the rescue of a lawyer for the petitioners when he floundered on the question of whether states that ban gay marriage should have to recognise weddings carried out in other states.
Would they be allowed to refuse recognition in other cases? Such as where another state allowed the marriages of children after puberty, Justice Alito wanted to know.
“I think, the presumption would be in such a state that someone age 13 can’t consent,” interjected Ginsburg helpfully.
In the end, her bottom line – rejecting the notion that extending marriage rights would somehow weaken the institution – was persuasive enough that even chief justice Roberts appeared sympathetic.
“All of the incentives, all of the benefits that marriage affords would still be available,” said Ginsburg. “So you’re not taking away anything from heterosexual couples. They would have the very same incentive to marry, all the benefits that come with marriage that they do now.”
If this has been a civil injury case, it might have been thrown out right then. Instead, campaigners for marriage equality will have to wait until June to see if Ginsburg’s colleagues see it that way too.
