Trump's approach to Russia-Ukraine war ‘doomed to fail'
We speak to retired US general Ben Hodges, who's a former commander of United States Army Europe. He endorsed the Democrat candidate, Kamala Harris, in the US elections.
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The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Democrats wrestle over chance to kill the ban on transgender care in Trump's ‘Big, Beautiful Bill'
Despite being in the minority, Democrats have a chance to remove a provision from President Donald Trump's ' One Big, Beautiful Bill ' that would prevent Medicaid dollars from being used to cover gender-affirming care.' The questions is, will they? The issue emerges more than eight months after a 2024 election from which Democrats are still digging out and also working out their messaging about how to defend the rights of transgender people without being painted as too radical by Republicans. In the presidential race, Trump and his associated super PACS hit Kamala Harris in ads for supporting taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for inmates, ending the ad by saying 'Kamala is for They/Them. President Trump is for you.' Republicans also hit Democrats in down-ballot races specifically on the subject of allowing transgender athletes to compete in women's sports. That might be why when The Independent asked some top Democratic senators about whether they would try to strike the language from Republicans' bill, even some of the most liberal voices said they did not know . 'I don't know,' Sen. Chris Murphy told The Independent last week when asked if it could the strict criteria the Senate Parliamentarian would subject the bill to. Sen. Patty Murray, the vice chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, simply told The Independent, 'I haven't seen the language.' Murray later clarified on Bluesky that she opposed the ban in Medicaid. 'I had not seen the language but let me be clear: I support stripping out as much from the bill as Democrats can, including this ban.' But even liberal Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren dodged the question. 'I haven't seen it, ' she told The Independent last week when asked if she would raise a point of order on it. When asked if she was worried about it, she repeated, 'I haven't seen it.' The avoidance shows how Democrats are in the position of being on the defensive on an issue where Republicans think they can win against Democrats, while at the same time defending a vulnerable population the party has long said it would support. Some Democrats have said they would support efforts to challenge the language. Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, who is the first openly gay person elected to the Senate, told The Independent earlier this month that she assumed Democrats would but that she had not seen the details of the legislation 'What I would say substantively is that, this is, again, talking about taking away people's health care, and taking parents' ability to decide what kind of health care their children need,' she said. The Republican bill in the House that passed through the House Energy & Commerce Committee banned Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance dollars from being used to provide gender-affirming care for minors. In a last-minute addition before the bill went to a vote on the floor, an amendment struck the term 'for minors' from the legislation, meaning it would put in place a blanket ban on gender-affirming care for all transgender people. The legislation would also prohibit coverage of gender transition care as an 'essential health benefit' offered by health care exchanges created in the 2010 Affordable Care Act signed by former president Barack Obama. The Senate Finance Committee released the health care part of its version that is almost identical to the House version except it does not include the 'essential health benefit' provision. 'I obviously think these issues are private and personal,' Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Finance Committee which is in charge of health care, told The Independent. Republicans, who have only 53 seats in the Senate, plan to pass the bill through the process of budget reconciliation. That would allow them to pass the bill with a simple majority and avoid a filibuster as long as the legislation relates to the budget and federal spending. As part of the process, the legislation goes through the 'Byrd Bath,' named for late Senator Robert Byrd, where the Senate Parliamentarian determines whether parts of the legislation relate directly to the budget or are 'merely incidental.' Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas, who sponsored the amendment, told The Independent that he believes it will comply with the rules because it saves taxpayer dollars. But if the the Senate parliamentarian rules that part of the legislation does not comply with reconciliation rules, the majority party can still bring the amendment on the floor, but the minority party can raise a point of order. If Republicans want to waive the point of order, it would require three-fifths of the Senate, or 60 votes, vote to waive it. Sen Jeff Merkley, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, said that he thought Democrats would likely challenge it. 'Well, we're certainly taking a look at all of the pieces of policy that don't belong in this type of bill,' he told The Independent. 'You don't put policy in there. That sure sounds like policy to me.' It also comes after when Republicans regularly criticized Democrats in campaign advertisements about allowing transgender athletes in women's sports. Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, who recently told The Dispatch that he opposes allowing transgender athletes in some women's sports, told The Independent he thought that Democrats would challenge the Medicaid ban. 'I think it's outside the boundaries of reconciliation,' Gallego told The Independent. Mady Castigan, independent journalist and advocate who has published updates on the bill and urged people to call their lawmakers about it, has been pushing for people to make calls to lawmakers to oppose the bill. 'I really doubt there's a ton of people calling and asking their senators to vote for this specific provision,' she said. 'But I guarantee you, there's a ton more calling in to oppose it, and whenever something like that happens, you know, it definitely swings the political calculations.' But as of right now, much of the future of the legislation is unclear because Senate Republicans have yet to release the tax and health care aspects of their bill. 'I would assume so, but I haven't seen the details of it,' Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota, who is retiring, told The Independent about whether Democrats would challenge the ban. But other Democrats avoided the question. 'There's a whole list of stuff that's being scrubbed there. Both in the privilege scrub now and in the later point of order challenges, and I can't say any more than that,' Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island told The Independent. This would not be the first time that Democrats and supporters of transgender rights pushed back on anti-transgender legislation. Earlier this year, Senate Democrats blocked legislation that would have banned transgender athletes from women's sports.
Daily Mail
4 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Sonny Hostin shares fresh insights from Kamala Harris interview
By Sonny Hostin said she feels 'terrible' that she 'took down the Democratic Party' by asking Kamala Harris to name what she would have done different to Joe Biden in the White House. Harris infamously told the liberal gabfest that there was nothing she would change from how her boss governed. 'There is not a thing that comes to mind,' Harris said. Harris justified her reason for keeping to Biden's record by noting: 'I've been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact.' Speaking to the show's producer Brian Teta on its 'Behind the Table' podcast, Hostin claimed she was right to ask the question but hated the impact it had on the election. Teta asked if she expected it to become a viral moment, to which Hostin answered: 'I knew it instantly when she answered it.' The left-leaning host admitted she desperately flailed to try and save Harris with another question on the subject. 'Which is why I asked the follow-up question, 'is there one thing?' Because I knew, I could see the soundbite and I knew what was going to happen, but I thought it was a really fair question and I thought it was a question that she would expect.' Hostin, who was openly rooting for Harris, felt even worse when she learned the anecdote ended up in Jake Tapper's bombshell book about the cover-up of Biden's senility. 'And now Jake Tapper wrote it in his book? I feel terrible.' Hostin refused to say it cost Harris the election but Alyssa Farah Griffin, one of the show's conservative panelists, disagreed. 'The Trump campaign put so much ad money behind that specific clip and what they were trying to do is tie her to Biden's unfavorabilities, but more than that, just simply the right-track, wrong-track of the election… They used it to say, Well, she's not going to do anything different,' Griffin said. Appearing on the popular daytime show just a month before the elections during her truncated campaign, Harris was unsteady in several of her media appearances. Her comments were made to the hosts of ABC's The View when she appeared on the show in October for a softball interview where she was fawned over. Whoopi Goldberg introduced her as 'the next president of the United States.' The Democratic nominee was just as friendly, posing for pictures with the hosts during commercial breaks. On the view, her advisor Stephanie Cutter was floored when Harris got asked if there was anything she would have done differently than Biden. 'What the hell was that?' Cutter said she thought at the time. 'That's not what we practiced.' Her response was also chronicled in the new book Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House, by reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes. It also tells of other key moments, like a 'cringe' video clip where Harris had to feign surprise at picking up the endorsement of Barack and Michelle Obama. Failing to identify a single issue where she parted with Biden yoked her even more to the president, who had bowed out after his debate disaster but was also unpopular in opinion polls going back years. It denied her the opportunity to hold up a policy difference that might define her as something different beyond being a younger alternative. 'It provided the money shot' for negative ads that would tie link Harris and Biden. 'And it was her own bad moment. When she gave us the gift of the View interview, we were able to anchor her to the Biden administration in her own words, which is something we were trying to do anyway,' a Trump advisor told the authors. Donald Trump, Jr. was even more forceful, as reported at the time. 'And just like that, Kamala's entire bull[expletive] campaign about being a 'change agent' collapses. You can't call yourself a change agent when you not only agree with every single disaster Joe Biden is responsible for, but you brag about being involved in all those decisions!,' he wrote on X. Aides had given Harris a list of items that made her 'proud of her work with Biden.'
Telegraph
5 hours ago
- Telegraph
Democrats will not side with Israel against Iran, poll shows
Democrats cannot bring themselves to side with Israel against Iran's authoritarian regime and pursuit of nuclear weapons, according to a new poll shared with The Telegraph. The polling found that a little more than a third sided with Israel in the Middle East, with only eight per cent saying Iran. But some 52 per cent of Democrats in the survey of 1039 registered voters said they could not pick sides between a Jewish democracy or an Islamic theocracy. The issue illustrates how the party is struggling for clear leadership in the wake of their presidential election defeat, with their base shifting far to the left, said James Johnson, co-founder of JL Partners, which conducted the poll. 'It doesn't take much to shock me any more but I was genuinely gobsmacked by this finding,' he said. 'We know that Democrats have tended to oppose arming Israel, and have expressed concern about Israel's foreign policy. But this poll steps into a totally different order of magnitude: Democrat voters are so coloured by their view of Israel, that they cannot bring themselves to wholly condemn Iran. Instead they opt to sit on the fence.' Kamala Harris, the party's 2024 presidential candidate, lost support among Arab-Americans last year because of the Biden administration's support for Israel's war in Gaza. And the poll results could explain why so many potential 2028 candidates have steered clear of the Israel-Iran conflict and avoided offering their thoughts as they try to work out where Democratic voters stand. The poll was conducted at the start of this week after Israel launched strikes on Iran, prompting a barrage of missiles fired in return. The escalation has taken the Middle East to the brink of a regional war and Donald Trump, US president, is w eighing whether to send heavy bombers to obliterate Tehran's nuclear ambitions. A majority of Americans (59 per cent) said they backed Israel. That figure rose to 80 per cent among Trump voters and to 80 per cent among Republicans more broadly. Democrats said they were unsure. Only 36 per cent said they backed Israel. At the same time, Mr Trump is under intense pressure from many of his allies not to intervene in the conflict. Populists such as Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News anchor, have accused him of allowing 'warmongers' to get in his ear, after campaigning last year to avoid any future foreign entanglements. The result is the threat of a fracture within the Maga coalition, between its 'America First' wing and more traditionally hawkish Republicans. The new poll suggests there is a reckoning on the other side of the political spectrum as Democrats weigh whether to back Israel in its quest to end Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. The party has already struggled with splits over the US role in Gaza, where almost 50,000 have been killed since Israel launched its response to the October 7 Hamas attacks. While Joe Biden's administration backed the Israeli government, progressives including Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American congresswoman, described it as a genocide. And the Israeli strikes on Iran triggered opposing responses from senior figures. Jackie Rosen, a Democratic senator from Nevada who sits on the armed services committee, said: 'Israel acted in self-defence against an attack from Iran, and the US must continue to stand with Israel, as it has for decades, at this dangerous moment.' But others condemned the strikes for disrupting negotiations over Iran's nuclear programme. Pramila Jayapal, a congresswoman from the progressive wing of the party, said: 'Netanyahu must not be allowed to pull America into another forever war. Instead, we must immediately push for negotiated de-escalation.' It could prove a particularly tricky needle to thread for some of the party's 'big beasts' who have an eye on the 2028 presidential race. Ms Harris, the former vice-president, Pete Buttigieg, who was Joe Biden's US transportation secretary, and Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, have all stayed silent. Mr Johnson added: 'This, coupled with other findings in the poll, suggest that put simply, Democrat voters have a serious problem with the Jewish state of Israel. 'Such a position is so wildly out of step with the American people as a whole that it could cripple Democrat candidates in their campaigns next year - and should be a central concern as Democratic primary seasons get under way.'
