Garland vows to hold January 6 attackers to account after Oath Keepers conviction – live

The chair of the Georgia Republican Party cannot share lawyers with 10 other fake electors, a judge ruled. The AP reports:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The chair and other fake electors cannot share lawyers in matters related to a special grand jury investigation into possible illegal meddling in the 2020 election in the state.

A special grand jury was seated earlier this year to aid the investigation by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis into whether Republican former President Donald Trump and others committed crimes through their efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Willis has made clear that she is interested in the actions of 16 Republicans who signed a certificate declaring falsely that Trump had won and also declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors, even though Biden had won the state, and a slate of Democratic electors was certified. Willis has said in a court filing that she notified lawyers for those 16 people that they are targets of her investigation, meaning that they could face criminal charges.

Eleven of those fake electors, including Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer, are represented by two lawyers who are paid by the party, Holly Pierson and Kimberly Debrow. Willis’ team in October filed a motion seeking to disqualify the two from representing all of those clients, saying it represented a conflict of interest.

They argued that, if Pierson and Debrow continue to represent any of the 11, “there is a serious possibility of future ethical problems concerning confidentiality of information obtained in the course of their representation thus far.”

In the clearest signal yet that Ron DeSantis is preparing a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, it was announced on Wednesday that the rightwing governor of Florida will publish a campaign-style book, mixing memoir with policy proposals.

The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Renewal, will be published by Broadside Books, a conservative imprint of HarperCollins, on 28 February.

The governor, his publisher said, will offer readers “a first-hand account from the blue-collar boy who grew up to take on Disney and Dr Fauci”.

DeSantis has not announced a 2024 run, but he is widely reported to be considering one. His victory speech after a landslide re-election this month met with chants of “Two more years!”

The cover of the governor’s book shows him smiling broadly in front of a US flag.

With Donald Trump under fire over disappointing midterms results, looming indictments and a controversial dinner with a white supremacist, possible Republican opponents are rapidly coming into focus.

Read more:

Garland’s remarks come after the recent appointment of Jack Smith as independent special counsel overseeing investigations into Donald Trump’s hoarding of top secret documents and involvement in the January 6 riot.

From the Guardian’s prior explainer:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Smith has previously served as the chief of public integrity for the US justice department and dealt in particular with cases involving corruption, bringing cases against prominent Republicans and Democrats. In 2015 he was appointed first assistant US attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee. He is a registered independent, not aligned with either of the two dominant political parties in the US.

Since 2018 he has been the chief prosecutor for the international criminal court in The Hague, the city on the North Sea that operates as the national administrative center of the Netherlands, and there has investigated and adjudicated war crimes that took place in Kosovo, in the Balkans.

Read more:

At a press conference, Merrick Garland spoke on the justice department’s recent lawsuit against the city of Jackson, Mississippi for violating the Clean Drinking Water Act. In August, flooding caused failure of the area’s water treatment plant, leaving residents without clean drinking water for a week.

The lawsuit, if won, would revoke the city’s control over its water system.

The DOJ’s new department of environmental justice, which got its first appointed leader earlier this month, is in charge of the suit against the city.

“Although environmental justice can happen anywhere, injustice can happen anywhere. Communities of color, Indigenous communities and low-income communities often bear the brunt,” Garland said. “We will continue to prioritize cases like this one that will have the greatest impact on communities most vulnerable to environmental harm.”

​​US attorney general Merrick Garland is speaking on yesterday’s conviction of Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes for creating the violent plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

Garland praised the justice department for its effort to bring a case against Rhodes and his five co-conspirators. Rhodes was found guilty of seditious conspiracy, a rare charge, by a 12-person jury.

“The verdict in this case makes clear department will work tirelessly to hold accountable those responsible for crimes related to the attack on our democracy on January 6, 2021,” Garland said.

In the daily White House press briefing, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is responding to heat Joe Biden is getting for pushing Congress to impose an agreement – one that multiple unions did not approve – on rail workers to avert a strike.

Some rail workers are saying Biden “blew it” by giving Congress the greenlight to intervene, though Biden has been emphasizing the economic impact a rail strike would have on the country.

The House voted to give rail workers seven days of paid sick leave, a key point of tension in contract negotiations between unions and rail companies.

The vote was close – 221 to 207 – and it is unclear whether the provision can get enough support in the Senate.

The vote was separate from a vote the House made earlier today to impose an agreement on rail workers that includes a pay raise, annual bonus and cap on healthcare premiums. The agreement, made in September, does not include paid sick leave. The House ultimately took up the agreement to avoid a rail strike in December.

Union members had drawn out contract negotiations over paid sick leave, arguing that workers were subject to unfair conditions, having to use vacation days when sick or face penalties.

In the Senate, Bernie Sanders is leading the fight for the seven days of sick leave. At least 12 Democrats have joined him in their support for the measure so far, though it is unclear whether Democrats can get an extra 10 Republican votes to get the measure passed.

Maya Yang reports:

Two men convicted of fraud for targeting Black voters with phony robocalls before the 2020 election must spend 500 hours registering voters in low-income neighborhoods of Washington DC, an Ohio judge ruled.

The calls told people they could be arrested or forced to receive vaccinations based on information they submitted in votes by mail.

Jacob Wohl, 24, of Irvine, California, and Jack Burkman, 56, of Arlington, Virginia – rightwing operatives with a history of targeting Democrats and other public figures – pleaded guilty last month, each to a single felony count of telecommunications fraud.

The judge in Cuyahoga county common pleas court, John Sutula, also fined each man $2,500 and placed them on two years’ probation. They were ordered to spend six months in home confinement, beginning at 8pm each day.

“I think it’s a despicable thing that you guys have done,” Sutula said, comparing their actions to violence used to suppress Black voters in the south in the 1960s.

Wohl and Burkman were indicted in October 2020, accused of arranging for a voice broadcast service to make about 85,000 robocalls to predominantly Black neighborhoods in Ohio, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois in the run-up to the 2020 general election.

Prosecutors said the pair were responsible for 3,500 calls to residents of Cleveland and East Cleveland.

The House just voted to impose a labor agreement on rail workers, averting a potential rail strike that was to start in December. Though a majority of the dozen unions have supported the agreement, four have voted against it and were prepped to strike come December.

The agreement includes a pay increase, a $1,000 annual bonus and a cap on healthcare premiums.

Those against the agreement have decried its lack of paid sick leave for workers. The unions argue that workers have to use vacation when calling out sick else they are penalized.

With a strike looming, Joe Biden called on Congress to intervene by voting on the agreement, which was made in September. In a statement, Biden said that he is “grateful” that the House voted to avert the strike and urged the Senate to “move quickly” on getting the bill passed.

“Without action this week, disruptions to our auto supply chains, our ability to move food to tables, and our ability to remove hazardous waste from gasoline refineries will begin,” Biden said. “A rail shutdown would be devastating to our economy and families across the country.”

Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell suggested the Fed will continue to raise interest rates, though at a slower pace if inflation continues to go down.

Powell said that he believes the labor market needs to cool to get the inflation rate down. The Fed has set a goal of 2% inflation. In October, the 12-month inflation rate was at 7.7% – the lowest it’s been since the beginning of the year.

“The time for moderating the pace of rate increases may come as soon as the December meeting,” Powell said. He indicated that a raise of half a percentage point would be suitable. The Fed has been aggressively raising interest rates, with four consecutive 0.75-point rate raises over the last year.

Powell noted that there is still “a long way to go in restoring price stability”, including tempering wage growth to a level that would be consistent with 2% inflation and a balancing of the labor market.

The Fed will set interest rates at its next meeting on December 14.

Chris McGreal reports …

Two former senior US diplomats have made a highly unusual call for the Biden administration to cut weapons supplies to Israel if the incoming far-right government uses them to annex Palestinian land, expel Arabs or finally kill off the diminishing possibility of a Palestinian state.

Daniel Kurtzer, a former US ambassador to Israel under George W Bush, and Aaron David Miller, a US Middle East peace negotiator during several administrations, have called for what they described as an “unprecedented and controversial” break from America’s largely unconditional military and diplomatic support for Israel if “the most extreme government in the history of the state” pursues the stated aims of some of its members.

The pair warn that these could include “efforts to change the status of the West Bank”, in effect a warning against partial or wholesale annexation of Palestinian land to Israel. They also warned against increased use of force against Arabs in the occupied territories and Israel by incoming ministers who have espoused openly racist views, escalating settlement construction, and moves “to build infrastructure for settlers that is designed to foreclose the possibility of a two-state solution”.

Full story:

Reuters reports the latest news on Joe Biden’s bid to avert a damaging rail strike, thus:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}A majority of the US House of Representatives has backed a bill to block a potentially crippling rail strike, but the fate of a separate proposal by lawmakers to mandate paid sick time remains uncertain.

With voting ongoing, more than 250 members of 432 current House members had voted in favor of imposing a tentative contract deal reached in September on a dozen unions representing 115,000 workers after Biden warned of the catastrophic impact of a rail stoppage that could begin as early as 9 December. A separate vote is planned later on Wednesday on whether to require seven days of paid sick leave.

Here at Guardian US, Michael Sainato reported earlier on disquiet among railroad unions:

Railroad workers have expressed dismay at Joe Biden’s proposed solution to a looming strike that threatens to derail the US economy, which they say belies his image as the most pro-union president in generations.

As a 9 December deadline looms for the long-running dispute between the US’s largest railway companies and their unions, Biden has called on Congress to intervene and block a strike that could cost the US economy about $2bn a day, by some estimates.

The impending strike comes as the US struggles with a cost-of-living crisis driven by a 40-year high in inflation. Biden has said a railroad labor action could “devastate our economy”. On Wednesday, Congress is expected to pass legislation that will force a settlement.

But union leaders are unhappy that Biden’s solution appears to be the imposition of a settlement reached in September that has been rejected by many for failing to address concerns about pay, sick days, staff shortages and time off.

“Joe Biden blew it,” said Hugh Sawyer, treasurer of Railroad Workers United, a group representing workers from a variety of rail unions and carriers.

“He had the opportunity to prove his labor-friendly pedigree to millions of workers by simply asking Congress for legislation to end the threat of a national strike on terms more favorable to workers. Sadly, he could not bring himself to advocate for a lousy handful of sick days. The Democrats and Republicans are both pawns of big business and the corporations.”

Full story: