Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere, MLK jr – Page 27

What I Truly Expect if an Unconstrained Trump Retakes Power

The New York Times – Opinion

What I Truly Expect if an Unconstrained Trump Retakes Power

By Michelle Goldberg, Opinion Columnist – November 1, 2024

Donald Trump, wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, points his finger. — Credit…Damon Winter/The New York Times

Lately, I’ve seen conservatives taunting liberals online by asking why, if we really think America could be on the verge of fascism, our bags aren’t packed. “It’s tempting to begin trolling my anti-Trump friends by asking if they are liquefying assets, getting passports in order, etc.?” Scott McConnell, a founding editor of The American Conservative, posted on X. National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty said something similarly snarky: “So fascism is here and you’re not doing what people did when fascism showed up, which is contemplating emigration in terror or joining armed resistance.”

These jabs seem meant to mock the dread many of us are living in. But despite their bad faith, they’ve lodged in my mind, especially during the late-night insomniac hours when I’m up panicking about what’s going to happen on Tuesday. They’ve goaded me to think through what I truly expect to happen if an unconstrained Donald Trump retakes power, and what it would mean to raise children in a country sick enough to give it to him.

Many people I know who have the privilege to do so are in fact making contingency plans; friends whose family histories entitle them to European passports have secured them. But while I’m having lots of half-idle conversations about emigration, I’m not living my life as if either tyranny or exile is imminent, even though I believe, in keeping with assessments by prominent generals who’ve worked closely with Trump, that he’s a fascist.

Partly, I just feel frozen with horror. This awful liminal period is like waiting for the results of a biopsy, and it’s hard to reason clearly about the future until there’s a prognosis. Beyond that, a lesson of modern autocracy is that ordinary life, or at least a diminished version of it, can go on even as democratic hopes are slowly strangled.

My single biggest fear about a Trump restoration is that he keeps his promise to carry out “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” As The New York Times has reported, that would mean sending ICE to carry out “workplace raids and other sweeps in public places aimed at arresting scores of unauthorized immigrants at once,” and warehousing them in a network of newly built prison camps.

If this happens, there will almost certainly be large protests. And when they break out, it is not far-fetched to think Trump would order the military to violently suppress them; the generals now warning about a second Trump term say he wanted to do just that in the past. This is what I envision when I think of MAGA fascism: people demonized as “vermin” being dragged off to camps, while dissent is violently crushed by the armed forces. I don’t know how anyone who has listened to Trump and those around him can dismiss this scenario as hysterical.

There will, I assume, be persecutions of Trump’s more high-profile enemies. We know that Trump, in his first term, harangued Attorney General Jeff Sessions to prosecute Hillary Clinton, and the ex-president and his allies have been clear about their intention to end the independence of the Justice Department. Mitt Romney is taking seriously the possibility that Trump will use the government to go after him, telling The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins, “I think he has shown by his prior actions that you can take him at his word.” Gen. Mark Milley, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump and President Biden until he retired last year, told the journalist Bob Woodward that he fears Trump could have him recalled to duty and court-martialed for disloyalty. Anyone significant enough to threaten Trump could find themselves targeted.

And it won’t be only the powerful who need fear attacks by the MAGA state. Just look at those who’ve found themselves in the cross hairs of America First Legal, an organization headed by the former Trump aide Stephen Miller, which The New York Times called “a policy harbinger for a second Trump term.” It has sued charities that help women pay for abortions, Maryland schools that “expose children to radical gender ideology,” and “woke” corporations — including the N.F.L. — trying to increase diversity. In a second Trump term, Miller and his allies will be able to deploy the power of agencies including the Justice Department, the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against their foes.

Often, of course, they won’t have to; we’re already seeing troubling signs that some plutocrats are obeying in advance. The Washington Post’s decision to quash its editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris shocked so many of the paper’s readers because it seemed, despite the Post owner Jeff Bezos’ insistence to the contrary, like an act of corrupt capitulation.

As The Post itself has reported, Bezos’ companies have billions of dollars in government contracts at stake, and during the last Trump administration, the president went out of his way to punish the billionaire for Post coverage he didn’t like. In 2019, The Post reported, Marc Short, then Mike Pence’s chief of staff, told leaders of Bezos’ space exploration company, “You have a Washington Post problem.”

The transition from democracy to autocracy is a process, not an on-off switch. By the end of Trump’s first term, when the president was pressuring state officials to change vote totals, staffing the highest levels of government with thugs and lackeys, and, eventually, siccing a vigilante mob on the Capitol, we’d already gone farther on the path to authoritarianism than I’d once thought possible. The place we left off at in January 2021 will, in all likelihood, be the starting point for a Trump administration in 2025.

Johnny McEntee, who started as a Trump bag carrier, had by the end of Trump’s presidency become so powerful that some referred to him as the “deputy president.” As The Atlantic reported, he turned the Presidential Personnel Office, an agency in charge of hiring and firing political appointees, “into an internal police force, obsessively monitoring administration officials for any sign of dissent, purging those who were deemed insufficiently devoted to Trump and frightening others into silence.”

Now a leader of Project 2025, McEntee will most likely have a major role in staffing a new Trump White House. He recently called — with the kidding-not-kidding sneer common to MAGA — for scrapping the 19th Amendment, the one giving women the right to vote.

Days out from the election, pointing out the potential nightmares ahead feels like screaming into a void. Trump’s deep contempt for liberal democracy is, as they say, baked in. When Milley called Trump “fascist to the core,” and when Gen. John Kelly, a former Trump chief of staff, said that he wanted to rule as a dictator, the political debate wasn’t about whether they were correct, but about whether their words would matter. (The consensus seemed to be no.) So those of us who recognize what Trump is lurch forward to Tuesday, a coin flip away from losing what we thought was our democratic birthright, trying and often failing to think through the aftermath of the unthinkable.

But even if the unthinkable happens, it won’t happen all at once. Hannah Arendt wrote, in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” about how the dislocations of World War I created a mass of stateless people who lived “outside the pale of the law.” Seeing these people deprived of human rights, those secure in their citizenship did not generally worry about their own. “It was precisely the seeming stability of the surrounding world that made each group forced out of its protective boundaries look like an unfortunate exception to an otherwise sane and normal rule,” wrote Arendt.

My kids keep asking anxiously what will happen if Trump wins. I tell them that their lives won’t change, that we’ll have to try to stand up for others who are more vulnerable, but that we ourselves will be fine. The last two words I only say in my head: “For now.”

Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist since 2017. She is the author of several books about politics, religion and women’s rights, and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment.

Donald Trump Is Done With Checks and Balances

The New York Times – Opinion

Donald Trump Is Done With Checks and Balances

By Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist – November 1, 2024

A dense crowd in a sea of red hats at Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden; a supporter stands up wearing a jersey that reads “America 1.” — Credit…Damon Winter/The New York Times

What does it mean to say that “democracy is on the ballot” on Election Day?

In her speech on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., delivered from the same place near the White House where Donald Trump incited a crowd to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Vice President Kamala Harris said it was a question of whether Americans “have a country rooted in freedom for every American” or whether they have one “ruled by chaos and division.”

It was a question, she said later in her remarks, of whether the United States would “submit to the will of another petty tyrant” and become a “vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators.”

The vice president was not wrong. Election Day will be a referendum on whether we want an autocrat in office — a plebiscite, of sorts, on the very idea of government of the people, by the people and for the people. But Harris’s answer is incomplete. Also at stake on Tuesday, when it comes to the question of American democracy, is the future of the Constitution.

Will it continue into the 21st century as Frederick Douglass’s “glorious liberty document,” or will it legitimize an American-style authoritarianism as a new “covenant with death,” to use the words of Douglass’s erstwhile abolitionist ally, William Lloyd Garrison.

It is important to remember that the Constitution was neither written nor ratified with democracy in mind. Just the opposite: It was written to restrain — and contain — the democratic impulses of Americans shaped in the hothouse of revolutionary fervor.

“Most of the men who assembled at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 were also convinced that the national government under the Articles of Confederation was too weak to counter the rising tide of democracy in the states,” the historian Terry Bouton writes in “Taming Democracy: ‘The People,’ the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution.”

The framers’ Constitution would tamp down on and bind the democratic energies of those Americans who thought their revolution stood for something more egalitarian — more revolutionary — than what its leaders and leading figures imagined. It would channel democratic energy through divided institutions backstopped by counter-majoritarian rules and requirements, each designed to make it as difficult as possible to turn popular energy into governing majorities.

In short, the founders built a limited, exclusionary government centered on elite management of the people’s affairs. But by the start of the 19th century, it was clear that the people would not allow the Constitution to contain their democratic impulses and aspirations. The American Republic would not be as limited or as exclusive as the framers had envisioned.

Broad literacy and the wide availability of newspapers, pamphlets and books brought a vibrant culture of political debate and contestation. The emergence of organized political factions and, later, formal political parties brought large numbers of Americans into the political process, transforming the very nature of the union.

As Americans democratized their culture, their Constitution followed. They reshaped their constitutional order around political parties and embraced mass political participation as an integral part of the system.

You can see the vibrancy of this early form of American democracy, as exclusive as it still was, in the multitude of movements and minor parties that emerged throughout the antebellum period. There were Know-Nothings and Anti-Masons and Free Soilers, Liberty Party partisans and groups like the Wide Awakes.

“In America,” Alexis de Tocqueville observed during his tour of Jacksonian America, “democracy is given over to its own inclinations. Its pace is natural and all its movements are free.”

Out of the contradictions of America’s nascent democracy came a catastrophic civil war. And out of the practical and ideological demands of that war came the most expansive and, to that date, most inclusive vision yet for American democracy, encoded in a set of amendments that reconstituted the union as a nation. The 13th Amendment abolished chattel slavery. The 14th Amendment enshrined birthright citizenship and guaranteed the “privileges and immunities” of that citizenship. And the 15th Amendment outlawed racial discrimination in voting, giving Congress all the authority it needed to enforce that prohibition.

It should be said here that it wasn’t simply the act of amendment that changed and further democratized the Constitution. A political document as much as a legal one, its character and meaning are realized as much through practice and the everyday challenge of making it work as they are in law and legislation. Which is to say that if the Constitution that emerged out of the Civil War was more democratic than the one that helped produce that war, a good part of that was because Americans themselves, like the freed people of the South, fought to realize their democratic aspirations.

They were joined, in subsequent decades, by Americans of many other backgrounds. Over the next century and through great effort, American democracy would grow in fits and starts to include women and a broad variety of immigrant groups. And while Black Americans would suffer under the long night of Jim Crow, they would continue their struggle for equality, inclusion and recognition.

We were not given a democratic Constitution; we made one. We unraveled the elitist and hierarchical Constitution of the founders to build something that works for us — that conforms to our expectations.

But nothing is permanent. What’s made can be unmade. And at the foundation of Donald Trump’s campaign is a promise to unmake our democratic Constitution.

Consider his priorities. He wants to use the law enforcement arm of the federal government to harass his opponents and exact “retribution” on his political enemies.

“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Trump said last year. In September he threatened “Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials” with “long-term prison sentences” if they are found guilty of voter fraud, which Trump seems to equate with any form of political opposition.

Trump also wants to deport tens of millions of people from the United States, which will inevitably include American citizens, whether they’re the children of undocumented immigrants or students demonstrating in support of Palestinians. “Immediately after taking the oath of office, I will launch the largest mass deportation program in American history,” Trump said at an event in Texas last week.

To accomplish this, the former president intends to use the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which allows the president to detain and deport noncitizens from countries at war with the United States. The idea, if it needs to be spelled out, is to classify undocumented immigration as an act of war and use the law to remove foreign nationals from the United States without due process. To obtain the personnel necessary to carry out deportations on such a large, national scale, Trump would deputize local and state law enforcement as well as deploy the National Guard.

It is not just that Trump would attempt these power grabs — which would, on their own, introduce a level and degree of state repression heretofore unseen in American history — but that he would have the support of a legal and political movement eager to constitutionalize his actions as a legitimate exercise of presidential power. Trump would act in an authoritarian manner, and his allies would then write that authoritarianism into the Constitution.

That, in fact, is what the Supreme Court did in Trump v. Hawaii, when it turned a blind eye to the clear evidence of racial and religious bigotry driving the former president’s “travel ban” (neé Muslim ban) and freed the administration to impose its restrictions under a theory of broad (or perhaps a better word would be “credulous”) deference to the executive branch.

The court took a similar approach this year in Trump v. United States, when it gave the president a broad grant of criminal immunity from prosecution for “official acts.” Rather than reckon with the overwhelming evidence that Trump abused the office of the presidency in an illegal effort to overturn the results of an election he lost, what is in effect the Republican majority on the court turned the plain meaning of the Constitution on its head, freeing future presidents — including, perhaps, a future President Trump — to abuse their power under cover of law.

More so than most of his predecessors, Trump strained against the limits of the presidency. He never understood that the office was bound by higher law — that his power wasn’t absolute. He never understood that he was an officer of the Constitution and a servant of the people; he never understood that he was a subject and not the sovereign.

It was because of this fundamental misunderstanding — itself tied to his bottomless solipsism — that Trump tried to twist and turn the presidency into an extension of his ego. To the extent he failed to accomplish this, it was only because he was stymied by those around him — officials who chose to honor their commitment to the Constitution over the interests of one man. Those same officials now warn that if he is given another term in office, he will rule as a tyrant.

America got lucky. It won’t get lucky again. Free of the guardrails that kept him in place the first time, affirmed by the Supreme Court and backed by allies and apparatchiks in the conservative movement, Trump will merge the office of the presidency with himself. He will shake it from its moorings in the Constitution and rebuild it as an instrument of his will, wielded for his friends and against his enemies. In doing so, he will erode the democratic assumptions that undergird our current constitutional order. And he will have the total loyalty of a Republican Party that itself is twisting and abusing the counter-majoritarian features of the American system to undermine and unravel democracy in the states it controls.

“Democracy is never a gift bestowed by benevolent, farseeing rulers who seek to reinforce their own legitimacy,” the historian Sean Wilentz writes in “The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln”:

It must always be fought for, by political coalitions that cut across distinctions of wealth, power and interest. It succeeds and survives only when it is rooted in the lives and expectations of its citizens and is continually reinvigorated in each generation. Democratic successes are never irreversible.

Most Americans have lived only in a world where democracy was secure, where democracy was assumed. On Tuesday we’ll decide if we want to stay in that world or leave it behind.

The Sun endorses Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to lead the nation

The Las Vegas Sun

The Sun endorses Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to lead the nation

The Las Vegas Sun – October 20, 2024

Harris-Walz Rally at Thomas & Mack

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz join hands during a rally at the Thomas & Mack Center Saturday, Aug. 10, 2024.

The upcoming presidential election presents a pivotal moment for the United States, offering a choice between preserving democracy or sliding into autocracy.

The Republican Party has nominated a womanizing narcissist and aspiring dictator as its candidate. He and his supporters believe in trampling on the rights of women, providing greater protections to guns than schoolchildren, silencing the history and existence of people of color and LGBTQ+ people, forcing working class families and seniors to choose between food and medicine and ceaselessly attacking the immigrants who dream of a better life.

The Democratic Party, on the other hand, has nominated a leader who will fight to preserve the rights and institutions that have made the United States the envy of the world while championing the promise of the American dream. She believes in fighting for the rights of women to choose what happens to their body, protecting children from criminals armed with weapons of war, preserving Social Security and health care programs that Americans have paid into their entire lives, giving a helping hand to those in need and creating pathways to citizenship for immigrants who contribute to our economy and our communities.

Kamala Harris represents a bridge between the measured approach of Joe Biden and the hunger for change that drove millions to support Donald Trump. While we understand the belief held by many Americans that they are being left behind, Trump is not the answer. His disregard for democratic institutions, tarnishing of the judiciary and inability to conceive of a government that serves anyone or anything beyond his personal interests are the hallmarks of an aspiring dictator. Harris, on the other hand, offers the stability and confidence of a veteran public servant and the bold vision, energy and adaptability that is needed in a rapidly evolving world.

As vice president, Harris has proven herself a capable ambassador who will strengthen America’s alliances and project a position of strength to our adversaries. For a nation still recovering from the damage to its international standing under Trump, Harris represents a return to stronger ties to our allies, determined resistance to our enemies, principled diplomacy and a strong defense of democratic values. She will not coddle our enemies and betray our friends as Trump did.

Harris’ work in the U.S. Senate reinforced her credentials as a champion for middle-class and working families. She supported legislation that aimed to lower health care costs, protect Social Security and Medicare, and expand affordable housing — issues that resonate with older Americans who have spent their lives contributing to society and now seek dignity in their twilight years. Harris’ push for measures to combat climate change, from reducing greenhouse gas emissions to investing in clean energy, aims to address not only immediate health concerns but also an understanding of the long-term effects that current policies will have on future generations.

A former prosecutor and California attorney general, Harris has demonstrated a commitment to public safety while championing reforms that aimed to make the justice system more equitable. Her tenure focused not only on holding wrongdoers accountable but also on creating pathways to rehabilitation — policies that resonate with voters who believe in the Constitution’s promise of safety, security and accountability that are balanced against liberty, fairness and a commitment to second chances for those who earn them.

Yet, it is not just her experience that makes Harris the right choice — it is also her vision. As the child of immigrants and the first woman of color to serve as vice president, she has already made history and inspired a new generation to believe in the promise of American democracy. Those experiences have inspired her vision of a government more representative of the people it serves — no matter their social, cultural, geographic or economic background.

At the Democratic National Convention, she spoke of rebuilding the middle class and creating an “opportunity economy where everyone has the chance to compete and a chance to succeed.” Tellingly, she accepted the nomination for the presidency on behalf of “every American, regardless of party, race, gender or the language your grandmother speaks,” “everyone who has ever set out on their own unlikely journey,” and “people who work hard, chase their dreams and look out for one another.”

This language reflects Harris’ understanding that every American has a story to tell and that many of those stories share the common threads of overcoming hardship through hard work and the strength and support of family and community. She is genuinely interested in those stories, interested in who we are as Americans, what we want our future and our children’s future to look like and what she can do to help realize those dreams.

For American women, the ability to pursue a vision of their own choosing is growing increasingly difficult as dozens of states with GOP-controlled legislatures impose oppressive restrictions on women’s rights to control their own bodies and receive lifesaving medical care.

Beyond reproductive rights, women also continue to bear the brunt of lawmakers’ failure to support paid family leave, affordable child care, an extension of the child tax credit or even the Equal Pay Act. While in the Senate, Harris sponsored or cosponsored legislation championing each of these issues.

Older voters too have a particular stake in a Harris presidency. With Social Security and Medicare facing long-term funding challenges, the nation needs a leader who will protect and strengthen these programs. Harris has pledged to do so while opposing efforts to privatize or cut benefits. Furthermore, her emphasis on affordable prescription drug pricing is an issue of immediate relevance to all of us, but especially seniors who often struggle with high health care costs.

Her vice-presidential running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, shares Harris’ vision for leadership and governance that serves all Americans. It’s what inspired him to become a high school teacher, a football coach, an adviser to the school’s gay-straight alliance and a mentor to generations of young people trying to navigate decisions about the next steps in their soon-to-be adult lives. Walz also carried that vision into the governor’s office, where he cut taxes for the middle class, expanded access to prekindergarten and ensured that no child would go hungry at school, all while balancing the state budget.

Just as Harris stands in sharp contrast to Trump, Walz stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. From what we can tell, Vance’s only notable accomplishments since graduating from Yale Law School in 2013 have been helping billionaire venture capitalists make more money; founding a charity that didn’t help anyone except for Vance, who used it as a front for his political ambitions; and serving as an advisory board member for an organization that helped create the Project 2025 plan to destroy democracy and eliminate numerous civil rights.

Some readers might ask why we don’t note Vance’s time in the U.S. Senate among his accomplishments, but the reality is that he has accomplished nothing as a senator. Not even one of the 57 legislative bills Vance authored passed the Senate. Of course, Vance’s failure to do his job while collecting a taxpayer-funded salary is also likely related to his spending the past two years licking the boots of Trump and spreading bizarre and hateful theories about women in American life and inventing disgusting stories about Haitian immigrants. Vance’s bigotry does not appear to have a bottom, nor does his craven opportunism have limits.

The fact that Trump chose Vance as his running mate while Harris chose Walz underscores the differences in their judgment. While Harris seeks a commitment to public service and common good, Trump seeks nothing more than a “yes man” who can fulfill his pathetic need to be surrounded by people who stroke his ego and are willing to hate anyone Trump wants him to hate. Worse, Vance has made it clear that if faced with the same choice that Mike Pence faced when Congress was certifying the Electoral College vote, Vance would soil the Constitution for Trump.

It’s telling that Trump and Vance speak of America in the darkest terms and invent one imaginary crisis after another. They describe a chaotic, violent and evil America that is nothing like the lived experience of our citizens. They are lying. And like a long list of political villains before them, they trade in fear for power’s sake.

Harris and Walz on the other hand, don’t shirk from the challenge to improve policies and programs that need to be improved. But when they look at America and they describe their vision, it is filled with hope, inclusion and mending the wounds that have been inflicted by political vandals like Trump. The contrast could not be more stark: Harris and Walz love this country, its people and its freedom, Trump and Vance only want to own it. Harris looks at Americans and sees promise and opportunity that should be nurtured. This is what this nation needs in a leader.

One can’t ignore the striking differences in economic policies either. Trump’s crazed plan to institute massive tariffs to support his equally crazed plan for multitrillion-dollar tax cuts will doom America to a deep recession and burden future generations with trillions of dollars in additional deficit spending. His tariffs will cause massive inflation as the costs of the tariffs are passed on to American consumers and American companies. They will also result in retaliation from other nations targeting U.S. business and industry, crippling our economy.

We need to be clear-eyed on this: Trump’s tariff plans are not workable and not serious. They will deliver gigantic wealth to the richest Americans today, while saddling future generations with the bill for Trump’s debt. It’s a grift on a multitrillion dollar scale. Trump has bankrupted nearly all of his businesses; his current proposals will bankrupt this country for a generation or more. Virtually every responsible economist who has analyzed Trump’s plans warns of disaster if he’s allowed to get ahold of our economy again.

Harris, meanwhile, wants to ensure the middle class can thrive with detailed proposals to improve home affordability, small business creation and guarantees not to raise taxes on the middle class. While we believe her plans need further refinement in a variety of areas because the deficits are larger than we would like (but a fraction of the deficit spending Trump, the king of bankruptcies, has in mind) we have absolute faith in the idea that Harris will pull together a coalition of the brightest minds to bring about the strong economy that America deserves. When Harris speaks of an “opportunity economy,” she is serious.

In choosing Harris, Americans have an opportunity to elect a candidate who embodies both steadiness and a commitment to optimistic change. Her career is defined by a dedication to justice and equity, and her vision for the country prioritizes the needs of everyday Americans over the interests of the elite. She has shown she can rise to the moment and unite the country across generational and racial divides. Her leadership promises a government that works for all, restoring trust in public institutions while forging a path to a fairer, more sustainable future.

We can, in other words, choose to vote to make life better by putting people in office who believe in America and its people. Or we can vote to put people in office who want to divide further into camps, who have enemies lists, promise to put troops in the street and retaliate for dissent and repression.

That’s not a hard choice.

The country stands at a crossroads. A vote for Harris is a vote for renewal, stability and a government that genuinely serves the people. It is time for a leader who represents progress without abandoning the values that have long defined America. Kamala Harris is ready to take the helm and steer the nation forward. Americans deserve it. America demands it.

North Korean troops will become ‘cannon fodder’ if they join Russia’s war against Ukraine, South Korea says

Business Insider

North Korean troops will become ‘cannon fodder’ if they join Russia’s war against Ukraine, South Korea says

Kwan Wei Kevin Tan – October 31, 2024

Ukrainian releases video of Russian troops surrendering after a surprise attack Scroll back up to restore default view.

South Korea’s UN ambassador says North Korean soldiers will become “cannon fodder” in Ukraine.
North Korea is believed to have sent thousands of troops to aid in the Russian war effort.
South Korea’s prediction echoes what Ukraine and the US have said about Russia’s war of attrition.

North Korean troops headed to fight in Ukraine will “end up as mere cannon fodder,” Joonkook Hwang, the South Korean ambassador to the UN, said on Wednesday.

Hwang was speaking at a UN Security Council briefing in New York on the Russian invasion of Ukraine when he referenced North Korea’s involvement in the conflict.

North Korea is believed to have sent thousands of troops to aid Russia in its war against Ukraine, per officials from South Korea, Ukraine, and the US.

“As legitimate military targets, they will end up as mere cannon fodder, while the wages they are supposed to receive from Russia
will end up squarely in Kim Jong-un’s pocket,” Hwang said of the Russia-bound North Korean troops.

“Pyongyang’s treatment of its young soldiers, its own people, as expendable will be never forgiven,” he added.

South Korea’s mission to the UN declined to comment when approached by Business Insider.

‘Cannon fodder’

The news of North Korea’s troops joining Russian troops comes as Russia has struggled to find the manpower for its military. It has turned to tactics like offering significant signing bonuses — as high as 1.9 million rubles, or about $22,000 — and turning to its prison population to fuel its war effort.

Hwang’s prediction of the fate that awaits North Korean troops echoes comments Ukraine and the US have made over the course of the war.

In April 2022, Ukraine’s defense ministry said Russia was having trouble conscripting troops because people didn’t want “to become cannon fodder for the occupier’s army.”

In June, the Pentagon said North Korean soldiers will become “cannon fodder” if they are sent to aid the Russian war effort.

Russia has come to rely more on its allies as it sustains its war in Ukraine. Facing a shortage of arms, Russia has turned to countries like North Korea and Iran for weapons.

In June, Russian leader Vladimir Putin signed a wartime pact with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The agreement stands to open up another source of war supplies and ammunition to Russia.

“With boots on the ground alongside the supply of munitions, the DPRK has become the most visible, ardent, and committed supporter of Russia’s aggression in Europe,” Hwang said on Wednesday.

The war in Ukraine has now passed the two-and-a-half-year mark. As Russia continues to wage war, it faces a slew of problems at home, including inflation, currency issues, and a demographic crisis.

Wartime spending is propping up Russia’s economy, with some economists saying the war is the only thing keeping the country from entering an immediate recession.

November 1, 1:00 a.m. — This story has been updated with a response from South Korea’s mission to the UN.

Small number of North Korean troops are already inside Ukraine, officials say

CNN

Small number of North Korean troops are already inside Ukraine, officials say

Natasha Bertrand, CNN – October 30, 2024

TOPSHOT – This aerial photograph taken on February 1, 2024, shows residential buildings destroyed by shelling in Izyum, Kharkiv region, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by Roman PILIPEY / AFP) (Photo by ROMAN PILIPEY/AFP via Getty Images)More

Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.

A small number of North Korean troops are already inside Ukraine, according to two western intelligence officials, and officials expect that number to grow as the North Koreans complete training in eastern Russia and move toward the front lines of the war.

The North Korean troops’ presence inside Ukraine goes a step beyond what NATO and the Pentagon confirmed on Monday, which is that roughly 10,000 North Korean troops are training in eastern Russia with some en route to Russia’s Kursk region. Ukrainian troops have held territory inside Kursk since August.

“It seems that a good many of them are already in action,” one of the officials said on Tuesday, referring to the North Koreans. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said last week that Ukrainian intelligence assessed that the troops would start to enter combat zones on Sunday.

A US official said the US can not yet corroborate reports that North Koreans troops are already inside Ukraine. The US has been playing catchup, however, when it comes to North Korea’s deployments — US officials did not confirm publicly that the troops were in Russia until weeks after South Korea first alleged it.

US and South Korean diplomatic and military officials are meeting in Washington, DC this week to discuss the deployment and North Korea’s “expanding relationship with Russia” more broadly, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday.

Separately, top Ukrainian official Andriy Yermak is in the US capital Tuesday for meetings with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Yermak said he and Sullivan discussed the “North Korean soldiers whom Russia is preparing for war.”

South Korean officials also traveled to NATO headquarters on Monday and briefed allies on the North Korean deployments. NATO allies have been hoping that the intelligence spurs South Korea to begin providing military aid to the Ukrainians, which would be at odds with the South Koreans’ longstanding policy of not arming countries at war. But South Korea’s president has signaled an openness to changing that policy.

“While we have maintained our principle of not directly supplying lethal weapons, we can also review our stance more flexibly, depending on the level of North Korean military activities,” South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said last week.

It is still unclear how helpful the North Koreans will be to the Russians on the battlefield. Many of the troops deployed are special forces, the sources said, and intelligence assessments suggest that the North Korean government believes their troops have more combat power than regular Russian troops because they are better trained and specialized, officials said.

But North Korea’s military has not fought in an actual war for over 70 years, and intelligence officials believe the North Korean government sent them in large part so they could gain combat experience.

Officials also expect that at least some of the troops will desert their units once they get to the battlefield, and that the language barrier with the Russians will be a significant impediment to conducting seamless operations. The Russians have been teaching North Korean soldiers basic Russian commands in training, like “fire” and “in position,” South Korean lawmakers told reporters on Tuesday.

Some Russian troops are already raising concerns about how the North Korean soldiers will be commanded and provided with ammunition and military kit and have wondered “what the f**k to do with them,” according to audio intercepted by Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence on October 23 from encrypted Russian transmission channels.

The intercepts also reveal plans to have one interpreter and three senior officers for every 30 North Korean men, CNN has reported.

‘The number may rise’

Many of the public assessments that have emerged on North Korea’s troop movements have come to light via South Korean lawmakers speaking to the media after briefings with the country’s intelligence services.

On Wednesday, two lawmakers – Lee Seong-kweun and Park Sun-won – spoke to reporters after a closed door briefing from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Their assessment was that North Korea had sent members of its elite XI Army Corps to Russia, which specialize in urban terrain and infiltration. But the DIA questioned such a unit’s effectiveness in the more open terrain of the Kursk region.

The DIA added that there was not exact information on whether North Korean troops have been sent to fighting positions, but there “is a possibility that an advance team may have been sent to the frontline,” the lawmakers said.

South Korean intelligence has put the number of North Korean troops inside Russia right now at about 13,000, higher than the US and the UK. The number could go up further — the US has already revised its assessment upward from last week, when the White House assessed that only about 3,000 North Korean troops were in Russia.

“The number may rise,” a third western official said. “Allies and partners across the globe are watching and consulting and will proactively share intelligence on the matter as it affects the security of the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions and beyond.”

In addition to military personnel, North Korea has provided Moscow with 11,000 containers of ammunition consisting of around 2 million artillery rounds since last year, a senior NATO official told CNN earlier this month.

The US has also been urging China, which maintains a relationship with Pyongyang, to intervene and pressure the North Koreans to pull back, officials said.

Sullivan “directed the US government to engage the PRC and to organize an effort to get other countries to reach out to the PRC as well over our concerns about DPRK sending troops into Russia and the implications of that,” a US official told CNN, referring to China.

“We have communicated with the PRC about this matter to make clear that we are concerned about it, and that they ought to be concerned about this destabilizing action by two of its neighbors, Russia and North Korea,” Miller said.

Western officials are not optimistic, however, that China will intervene with North Korea’s plans, the sources said. China has continued to be a “critical enabler” of Russia’s war effort, according to the NATO official, and is still fueling Russia’s defense industry with substantial amounts of dual-use goods like microelectronics and machine tools that can be used to build weapons.

Harris’ unifying DC speech made Trump look every bit as small and divisive as he is

USA Today – Opinion

Harris’ unifying DC speech made Trump look every bit as small and divisive as he is

Rex Huppke, USA TODAY – October 30, 2024

Harris brings in thousands to DC's Ellipse, site of Trump's 2021 'Stop the Steal' rally

Let’s see if we can detect the subtle difference in our two presidential candidate’s closing messages.

Vice President Kamala Harris, before tens of thousands at the Ellipse near the White House, said Tuesday night: “The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised. A nation big enough to encompass all our dreams, strong enough to withstand any fracture or fissure between us. And fearless enough to imagine a future of possibilities.”

Convicted felon Donald Trump, before a crowd of maybe 8,500 in Pennsylvania, said Tuesday night: “It’s like we’re a giant garbage can.”

Hmm. Hard to tease out the nuanced distinction between Harris’ graceful rhetoric about the greatness of our country and Trump’s “We suck.” But the difference is there, I promise.

Kamala Harris offers unity and inspiration as Donald Trump divides and demeans

Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris campaigns at the Ellipse near the White House on Oct. 29, 2024, to give her closing arguments before Election Day.

The former president was coming off a weekend rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City that featured vile racism, profanity and enough hate speech to, I would hope, anger God. The “giant garbage can” line has become a part of his schtick, as he paints America as a crime-ridden nation overrun by immigrant gang members, rapists and murderers.

It’s all hogwash, of course, but it’s all he’s got. That and the lies he emits like a flatulent prune-farm dog.

Opinion: Trump’s racist Madison Square Garden rally was everything America shouldn’t be

Harris spoke from the same place where Trump, on Jan. 6, 2021, fomented an attack on the U.S. Capitol. The location was wholly intentional, as was her infinitely more mature and unifying message.

“America, for too long we have been consumed with too much division, chaos, and mutual distrust,” she said. “And it can be easy then to forget a simple truth: It doesn’t have to be this way. … It is time to stop pointing fingers. We have to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms. It is time to turn the page on the drama and the conflict, the fear and division.”

Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff wave to supporters after her presidential campaign speech at the Ellipse near the White House on Oct. 29, 2024.

Chaos and mutual distrust? Conflict, fear and division?

What could she be talking about?

Trump says fellow Americans represent ‘a great evilness’

Earlier in the day, Trump said of Democrats: “This is a sick group of people, I’m telling you. There’s a great evilness. You know, we want to come together as a country, but there’s a lot of evil there.”

At his night rally in Allentown, he continued going after Democrats: “Who the hell can win an election with open borders, transgender everybody, men playing in women’s sports? … Allow millions of people through an open border totally unvetted, totally unchecked, they come from parts unknown, they come from countries you’ve never even heard of, and then you find out that they came from jails and mental institutions, no, no, they cheat like hell and it’s a damn disgrace.”

Former President Donald Trump campaigns for reelection on Oct. 29, 2024, in Allentown, Pa.

Oh, I see, that’s the fear and chaos and divsion Harris referenced.

After hearing Trump’s rambling, I wish she had said, “We have to stop pointing fingers, and also stop using run-on sentences filled with weird fabricated nonsense.”

‘As Americans, we rise and fall together’

As recently as Sunday, Trump labeled those who oppose him “the enemy from within.”

Harris, by contrast, said this from the Ellipse: “The fact that someone disagrees with us does not make them the enemy within. They are family, neighbors, classmates, co-workers. They are fellow Americans, and as Americans, we rise and fall together.”

Opinion: If you think Democrats fear Trump, you should hear Republicans who worked for him

She also said: “Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at the table.”

Harris’ humility vs. Trump’s hubris

Harris showed humility – something Trump is allergic to – during her speech: “Look, I’ll be honest with you, I’m not perfect. I make mistakes.”

Trump, earlier in the day Tuesday, described people who may or not exist allegedly telling him how wonderful he is: “They said he’s the greatest president we’ve ever had. And then one of them said, ‘Sir, you’re the greatest president of my lifetime.’ … I said, ‘Does that include Abe Lincoln?’ Yes, sir. ‘Does that include George Washington?’ Yes, sir. I said, ‘That’s good.’ ”

The differences are stark as day and night

Harris said: “Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep people divided and afraid of each other. That is who he is.”

Fact check: True.

She continued, “But America, I am here to say: That’s not who we are.”

That part will be determined next week. It’s grace vs. the garbage can.

God willing, grace prevails.

Trump Camp Attempts Damage Control After Johnson Caught Being Too Explicit About Gutting ACA

TPM

Trump Camp Attempts Damage Control After Johnson Caught Being Too Explicit About Gutting ACA

Emine Yücel – October 30, 2024

The Trump campaign continued its dance of bamboozlement on where the Republican Party actually stands when it comes to gutting the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on Tuesday night, after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) acknowledged that Republicans will tackle “massive reform” of Obamacare should Donald Trump win the presidency and the GOP keep the House.

In a statement issued just after NBC News first reported on Johnson’s remarks, the campaign claimed that Trump does not support repealing the Affordable Care Act, attempting to put some distance between Trump’s vague “concepts of a plan” to supposedly improve the ACA and Johnson’s all out “no Obamacare” admission.

“This is not President Trump’s policy position,” campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Tuesday night. “As President Trump has said, he will make our healthcare system better by increasing transparency, promoting choice and competition, and expanding access to new affordable healthcare and insurance options.”

Republicans’ longstanding interest in repealing the ACA is a political liability for Trump this cycle and, similar to his abortion policy positions, he’s avoided publicly endorsing anything specific about what he wants Congress to do should he win back the White House and control of the upper and lower chambers. During his first term, Trump and the all-Republican Congress attempted unsuccessfully to repeal the law.

The campaign’s clean up statement distancing Trump from Johnson comes just a day after the House Speaker indicated that Republicans are planning to either get rid of the popular ACA or substantially gut it during a campaign event in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania the Republican speaker attended for House candidate Ryan Mackenzie (R).

“Health care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda. When I say we’re going to have a very aggressive first 100 days agenda, we got a lot of things still on the table,” Johnson said on Monday, according to a video obtained by NBC News.

“No Obamacare?” an event attendee asked Johnson.

“No Obamacare,” Johnson responded, reportedly rolling his eyes. “The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.”

“We want to take a blowtorch to the regulatory state. These agencies have been weaponized against the people. It’s crushing the free market; it’s like a boot on the neck of job creators and entrepreneurs and risk takers. And so health care is one of the sectors, and we need this across the board,” Johnson continued. “And Trump’s going to go big. I mean, he’s only going to have one more term. Can’t run for re-election. And so he’s going to be thinking about legacy, and we’re going to fix these things.”

The 14-year-old ACA, which provides health coverage to tens of millions of Americans, has been a frequent target of Republicans.

Over the years, congressional Republicans have tried and failed to overturn Obamacare on many occasions.

During his 2016 presidential campaign Trump himself vowed to repeal Obamacare. During his presidency he tried several times to do just that, with the Senate in the summer of 2017 coming just one vote shy of overturning the ACA. Backlash to Republicans’ failed attempts to repeal the law helped Democrats take back the House in 2018. Since then, Republicans have tried to soften their stance on the issue to a position of reform over repeal.

“I don’t want to terminate Obamacare, I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE. Obamacare Sucks!!!” Trump said in a Truth Social post in November 2023.

Trump’s been vague about his position ever since. In September, during the only presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump, the former president said Republicans will replace Obamacare under a second Trump presidency.

“Obamacare was lousy health care. Always was. It’s not very good today,” Trump said during the debate. “And what I said, that if we come up with something, and we are working on things, we’re going to do it and we’re going to replace it.”

When pressed about the specifics of his replacement plan, the former president did not offer anything beyond the now-infamous allusion to having “concepts of a plan.”

Meanwhile, drawing a stark contrast, Harris and Democrats have been campaigning on protecting and expanding Obamacare, highlighting Trump and the GOP’s past efforts to revoke the health coverage program every chance they get.

Mike Johnson vows major changes to Affordable Care Act if Trump wins election

The Washington Post

Mike Johnson vows major changes to Affordable Care Act if Trump wins election

Dan Diamond – October 30, 2024

A cardboard cutout of former President and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump wearing a Trump Force Captain hat is seen behind Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) as he speaks to supporters, at a Trump Force 47 campaign office in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on October 28, 2024. (Photo by SAMUEL CORUM / AFP) (Photo by SAMUEL CORUM/AFP via Getty Images)More

House Speaker Mike Johnson pledged “massive reform” of the Affordable Care Act if Donald Trump is elected president, reopening a politically sensitive policy issue for Republicans a week before Election Day.

Johnson (R-Louisiana), who appeared at a campaign event Monday for a Republican House candidate in Pennsylvania, told attendees that GOP leaders are again weighing how to overhaul the 14-year-old law, which provides health coverage to tens of millions of Americans and has been a frequent target of Republican repeal efforts.

“Health-care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda,” Johnson said, wearing a personalized jacket emblazoned with the Trump-Vance campaign logo. He added that a caucus of Republican physicians has shared proposals with him and that GOP leaders hope “to take a blowtorch to the regulatory state” and “fix things.”

“No Obamacare?” an attendee asked the speaker, invoking the term popularized by Republicans to describe the health law.

“No Obamacare,” Johnson responded. “The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.”

Johnson’s comments were first reported by NBC News, which published video of his remarks.

The Affordable Care Act, which Democrats enacted in 2010, has become one of the party’s more popular achievements after initially being perceived as a political liability. Sixty-two percent of adults had favorable views of the law in April, up from 38 percent a decade earlier, according to polling by KFF, a nonprofit health policy research, polling and news organization.

The law also has transformed the nation’s health-care landscape. The White House last month touted data showing that nearly 50 million Americans have obtained health coverage through the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges since they were established more than a decade ago, helping to lower the national uninsured rate to record lows in recent years.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has promised to expand enrollment through the law if elected president.

Republicans, meanwhile, mounted dozens of efforts in Congress to overturn the law, and Trump won the presidency in 2016 by pledging to “repeal Obamacare.” But several Trump-led repeal efforts fell short – with the Senate in July 2017 coming one vote away from overturning the Affordable Care Act – and the law’s near death catalyzed new support for it.

The backlash to Republicans’ repeal efforts also helped Democrats win back control of the House in 2018, prompting GOP leaders in recent years to avoid talking about doing away with the law. Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), last month even praised Trump as a good steward of the Affordable Care Act.

But Democrats remain eager to highlight Republicans’ past pledges to “repeal Obamacare,” with the Harris campaign and its allies on Tuesday night portraying Johnson’s comments as a vow to do away with the Affordable Care Act.

“Speaker Mike Johnson is making it clear – if Donald Trump wins, he and his Project 2025 allies in Congress will make sure there is ‘no Obamacare,’” Sarafina Chitika, a campaign spokeswoman, said in a statement. “That means higher health-care costs for millions of families and ripping away protections from Americans with preexisting conditions like diabetes, asthma, or cancer.”

Johnson “finally told the truth about Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican allies’ agenda for health care in their first 100 days. They want to repeal the ACA,” Leslie Dach, the chairman of Protect Our Care, a Democratic-aligned health-care advocacy group, wrote in a statement.

Johnson’s office disputed Democrats’ interpretation, with a spokesman accusing Harris of “lying about Speaker Johnson” by claiming that he had pledged to repeal the law.

“The audio, transcript, and even the NBC News article her campaign cites make clear that the Speaker made no such comments,” spokesman Taylor Haulsee wrote in a statement.

Haulsee declined to comment on what health-care changes Johnson would pursue next year or whether the House speaker would rule out an attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

The Trump campaign said that he did not support repealing the Affordable Care Act.

Trump has worked to downplay his past criticism of the Affordable Care Act ahead of the election, saying in a September debate that he would keep the “lousy” law in place, while acknowledging he still hopes to replace it with something “much better.” Vance recently floated a plan to roll back the law’s approach to how chronically ill people shop for health plans.

More voters side with Democrats on questions related to health-care costs and coverage, according to recent surveys. A KFF poll released in September found that 48 percent of voters trust Harris to do a better job than Trump on handling health-care costs, compared with 39 percent who favor Trump. The nine-point edge is one of Harris’s strongest advantages against Trump, who retains double-digit polling leads on the economy and immigration.

10,000 North Korean troops in Russia, inching closer to fight in Ukraine: Pentagon

The Hill

10,000 North Korean troops in Russia, inching closer to fight in Ukraine: Pentagon

Ellen Mitchell – October 28, 2024

Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.

North Korea has sent about 10,000 troops to train in Russia with the expectation they’ll be sent to fight in Ukraine within “the next several weeks,” the Pentagon said Monday.

“We believe that the [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)] has sent around 10,000 soldiers in total to train in eastern Russia that will probably augment Russian forces near Ukraine over the next several weeks,” deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters.

Singh said a portion of the North Korean soldiers have already moved closer to Ukraine, and U.S. officials believe they are heading to the Kursk border region in Russia, where Ukrainian troops this summer launched an incursion that Kremlin forces have struggled to push back.

“It is likely that they are moving in that direction towards Kursk. But I don’t have more details just yet,” Singh said of the North Koreans.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte earlier Monday confirmed some North Korean military units were already in the Kursk region — calling it a “dangerous expansion” of the conflict — but he did not say how many troops were there.

Speaking after South Korean intelligence and military officials visited NATO headquarters in Brussels, Rutte said Pyongyang’s shipment of ammunition and ballistic missiles to Russia is “fueling a major conflict in the heart of Europe.” He also called the deepening military cooperation between Russia and North Korea “a threat to both the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic security.”

The new U.S. estimate of 10,000 troops comes after Washington last week confirmed at least 3,000 North Korean soldiers were undergoing military training at multiple sites in Russia, a disclosure that followed similar intelligence reports from Kyiv and Seoul.

And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday said Moscow plans to deploy North Koreans on the battlefield within days.

The deployment means North Korean troops soon could be on the battlefield against Ukrainian forces, adding to Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II. The development is also sure to exacerbate tensions with the West, in the Korean Peninsula and the wider Indo-Pacific region.

Singh said should North Korean troops show up on the front lines, there will be no limitations on the use of U.S.-provided weapons on those forces.

“If we see DPRK troops moving in and towards the front lines, they are co-belligerents in the war,” Singh said. “This is a calculation that North Korea has to make.”

The topic is all but certain to come up Wednesday when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is set to meet with his South Korean counterpart at the Pentagon. That is followed by Thursday talks at the State Department between Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken and their South Korean equivalents.

“I think you can expect this to be a topic of discussion with the secretary and his counterparts,” Singh said. “This has broad interagency implications, not just for the United States, but for, as I mentioned, Europe and the Indo-Pacific.”

Russian leaders, meanwhile, have not directly confirmed or denied the presence of the North Koreans within their borders, but have hinted at it by pointing to Moscow and Pyongyang’s new security treaty, signed in June.

And Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday pushed back at Western condemnations over the two countries’ cooperation, calling it an “attempt to retroactively justify” military support to Ukraine.

The Atlantic Endorsement of Kamala Harris

October 29, 2024

Here is The Atlantic’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, first published on October 10, 2024. For the third time in eight years, Americans have to decide whether they want Donald Trump to be their president. No voter could be ignorant by now of who he is. Opinions about Trump aren’t just hardened—they’re dried out and exhausted. The man’s character has been in our faces for so long, blatant and unchanging, that it kills the possibility of new thoughts, which explains the strange mix of boredom and dread in our politics. Whenever Trump senses any waning of public attention, he’ll call his opponent a disgusting name, or dishonor the memory of fallen soldiers, or threaten to overturn the election if he loses, or vow to rule like a dictator if he wins. He knows that nothing he says is likely to change anyone’s views.

Almost half the electorate supported Trump in 2016, and supported him again in 2020. This same split seems likely on November 5. Trump’s support is fixed and impervious to argument. This election, like the last two, will be decided by an absurdly small percentage of voters in a handful of states.

Because one of the most personally malignant and politically dangerous candidates in American history was on the ballot, The Atlantic endorsed Trump’s previous Democratic opponents—only the third and fourth endorsements since the magazine’s founding, in 1857. We endorsed Abraham Lincoln for president in 1860 (though not, for reasons lost to history, in 1864).

One hundred and four years later, we endorsed Lyndon B. Johnson for president. In 2016, we endorsed Hillary Clinton for more or less the same reason Johnson won this magazine’s endorsement in 1964. Clinton was a credible candidate who would have made a competent president, but we endorsed her because she was running against a manifestly unstable and incompetent Republican nominee. The editors of this magazine in 1964 feared Barry Goldwater less for his positions than for his zealotry and seeming lack of self-restraint.

Of all Trump’s insults, cruelties, abuses of power, corrupt dealings, and crimes, the event that proved the essential rightness of the endorsements of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden took place on January 6, 2021, when Trump became the first American president to try to overturn an election and prevent the peaceful transfer of power.

This year, Trump is even more vicious and erratic than in the past, and the ideas of his closest advisers are more extreme. Trump has made clear that he would use a second term to consolidate unprecedented power in his own hands, punishing adversaries and pursuing a far-right agenda that most Americans don’t want. “We believe that this election is a turning-point in our history,” the magazine prophesied correctly when it endorsed Abraham Lincoln in 1860.

This year’s election is another. About the candidate we are endorsing: The Atlantic is a heterodox place, staffed by freethinkers, and for some of us, Kamala Harris’s policy views are too centrist, while for others they’re too liberal. The process that led to her nomination was flawed, and she’s been cagey in keeping the public and press from getting to know her as well as they should.

But we know a few things for sure. Having devoted her life to public service, Harris respects the law and the Constitution. She believes in the freedom, equality, and dignity of all Americans. She’s untainted by corruption, let alone a felony record or a history of sexual assault. She doesn’t embarrass her compatriots with her language and behavior, or pit them against one another. She doesn’t curry favor with dictators. She won’t abuse the power of the highest office in order to keep it. She believes in democracy. These, and not any specific policy positions, are the reasons The Atlantic is endorsing her.

This endorsement will not be controversial to Trump’s antagonists. Nor will it matter to his supporters. But to the voters who don’t much care for either candidate, and who will decide the country’s fate, it is not enough to list Harris’s strengths or write a bill of obvious particulars against Trump. The main reason for those ambivalent Americans to vote for Harris has little to do with policy or partisanship. It’s this: Electing her and defeating him is the only way to release us from the political nightmare in which we’re trapped and bring us to the next phase of the American experiment.

Trump isn’t solely responsible for this age of poisonous rhetoric, hateful name-calling, conspiracies and lies, divided families and communities, cowardly leaders and deluded followers—but as long as Trump still sits atop the Republican Party, it will not end. His power depends on lowering the country into a feverish state of fear and rage where Americans turn on one another. For the millions of alienated and politically homeless voters who despise what the country has become and believe it can do better, sending Trump into retirement is the necessary first step.

If you’re a conservative who can’t abide Harris’s tax and immigration policies, but who is also offended by the rottenness of the Republican Party, only Trump’s final defeat will allow your party to return to health—then you’ll be free to oppose President Harris wholeheartedly. Like you, we wish for the return of the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, a party animated by actual ideas. We believe that American politics are healthiest when vibrant conservative and liberal parties fight it out on matters of policy.

If you’re a progressive who thinks the Democratic Party is a tool of corporate America, talk to someone who still can’t forgive themselves for voting for Ralph Nader in 2000—then ask yourself which candidate, Harris or Trump, would give you any leverage to push for policies you care about.

And if you’re one of the many Americans who can’t stand politics and just want to opt out, remember that under democracy, inaction is also an action; that no one ever has clean hands; and that, as our 1860 editorial said, “nothing can absolve us from doing our best to look at all public questions as citizens, and therefore in some sort as administrators and rulers.” In other words, voting is a right that makes you responsible.

Trump is the sphinx who stands in the way of America entering a more hopeful future. In Greek mythology, the sphinx killed every traveler who failed to answer her riddle, until Oedipus finally solved it, causing the monster’s demise. The answer to Trump lies in every American’s hands. Then he needs only to go away.