Eliana Willis

The House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, said on Tuesday he opposes a proposal to form an independent and bipartisan commission to investigate the deadly Capitol attack of 6 January.McCarthy’s opposition will erode Republican support ahead of a vote this week. Democrats control the House but McCarthy’s opposition could dim the chances of legislation to establish the commission in the evenly divided Senate.In a statement, McCarthy accused the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, of negotiating in bad faith and “playing political games”.He said: “Given the political misdirections that have marred this process, given the now duplicative and potentially counterproductive nature of this effort, and given the speaker’s shortsighted scope that does not examine interrelated forms of political violence in America, I cannot support this legislation.”McCarthy has long said the commission should also investigate leftwing groups that protested against police violence after the murder of George Floyd.Pelosi flatly rejected that approach, seeking to focus the panel on 6 January and form it along the lines of the bipartisan and independent 9/11 commission, which investigated the terror attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and John Katko of New York, the top Democrat and Republican on the House homeland security committee, reached a compromise last week.The commission would be split evenly between Democratic and Republican appointees, none of them serving government officials, with agreement needed for subpoenas to be issued.Supporters of Donald Trump breached the Capitol in service of his lie that the election was subject to mass fraud and in an attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. Some rioters looked for lawmakers including the then vice-president, Mike Pence, to capture and possibly kill. More than 400 have been charged.McCarthy said he supported that federal effort to hold attackers accountable but claimed the proposed commission could interfere with such work.Liz Cheney, the Wyoming representative ejected from Republican leadership over her opposition to Trump and attempts to downplay the Capitol riot, has led calls for McCarthy to testify willingly or be compelled to do so regarding his conversation with Trump during the attack.Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Washington state Republican, has said McCarthy told her that when he asked the president to call his supporters off, Trump replied: “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”In a recent interview on Fox News, McCarthy avoided questions about Beutler’s statement – but did not deny it.Cheney told ABC last week: “I would hope he doesn’t require a subpoena, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he were subpoenaed.”But McCarthy has thrown his support behind Trump, whose domination of the Republican party is almost complete despite his two impeachments – the second for inciting the insurrection at the Capitol – and his conclusive electoral defeat.Capitol police said this month that threats against members of Congress have increased by 107% compared with last year.In a statement, the agency said: “Provided the unique threat environment we currently live in, the department is confident the number of cases will continue to increase.”On Friday, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security released a report on domestic terrorism, covering recent years.In 2019, the agencies said racially motivated violent extremists “likely would continue to be the most lethal” domestic terrorist threat. This week, members of Congress will also consider a $1.9bn emergency supplemental spending bill to tighten security in and around the Capitol, buy more police equipment and enhance protection for federal judges.No lawmakers were injured during the 6 January attack but some who were trapped in the upper gallery of the House have received threats against their lives.Pelosi appointed Russel Honoré, a retired army lieutenant general, to make security recommendations. Honoré proposed hiring more than 800 police officers, constructing mobile fencing around the Capitol and an overhaul of the Capitol police board. More

The Republican who leads the Arizona county elections department targeted by a GOP audit of the 2020 election results is slamming Donald Trump and others in his party for their continued falsehoods about how the election was run.Maricopa county recorder Stephen Richer on Saturday called a Trump statement accusing the county of deleting an elections database “unhinged” and called on other Republicans to stop the unfounded accusations.“We can’t indulge these insane lies any longer. As a party. As a state. As a country,” Richer tweeted.Richer became recorder in January, after defeating the Democratic incumbent.The Republican state senate president, Karen Fann, has demanded the Republican-dominated Maricopa county board of supervisors answer questions raised by the private auditors she has hired.The Arizona senate took possession of 2.1m ballots and election equipment last month for what was supposed to be a three-week hand recount of the presidential race won by Joe Biden.We can’t indulge these insane lies any longer. As a party. As a state. As a countryInstead, the auditors have moved as a snail’s pace and had to shut down on Thursday after counting about 500,000 ballots. They plan to resume counting in a week, after high-school graduation ceremonies planned for the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, which they rented for the recount.Trump’s statement said, in part, that “the entire database of Maricopa county in Arizona has been DELETED! This is illegal and the Arizona State Senate, who is leading the forensic audit, is up in arms.”Richer and the board say that statement is just plain wrong. In recent days, both he and the board have begun aggressively pushing back at what they see as continuing falsehoods from Republicans who question Trump’s loss.“Enough with the defamation. Enough with the unfounded allegations,” Richer tweeted on Thursday. “I came to this office to competently, fairly, and lawfully administer the duties of the office. Not to be accused by own party of shredding ballots and deleting files for an election I didn’t run. Enough.”The board, led by Republican chairman Jack Sellers, have been aggressively using Twitter to push back, firing off messages slamming the private company doing the audit. The board plans to hold a public hearing Monday.“I know you all have grown weary of lies and half-truths six months after 2020 general elections,” Sellers said on Friday in announcing Monday’s meeting.Fann sent Sellers a letter on Wednesday requesting county officials publicly answer questions at the senate on Tuesday, but she stopped short of her threat to issue subpoenas.Fann repeated the senate’s demand for access to administrative passwords for vote-counting machines and internet routers. County officials say they have turned over all the passwords they have and have refused to give up the routers, saying it would compromise sensitive data, including classified law enforcement information held by the sheriff’s office.Fann proposed allowing its contractor to view data from the routers at county facilities under supervision of the sheriff’s office.“The Senate has no interest in viewing or taking possession of any information that is unrelated to the administration of the 2020 general election,” she wrote.The county says the passwords the senate is seeking are maintained by Dominion Voting Systems, which makes the vote-counting machines and leases them to the county.The company said in a statement on Thursday that it cooperates with auditors certified by the US Election Assistance Commission, and did so for two prior audits of 2020 results in Maricopa county, but won’t work with Cyber Ninjas.Fann has hired that company, a Florida-based cybersecurity firm, to oversee an unprecedented, partisan review of the 2020 election in Arizona’s largest county. They are conducting a hand recount of all 2.1m ballots and looking into baseless conspiracy theories suggesting there were problems with the election, which have grown popular with supporters of Trump. More

The lawyer for a Delaware man charged over the Capitol attack in January is floating a unique defense: Fox News made him do it.Anthony Antonio, who is facing five charges including violent entry, and disorderly conduct and impeding law enforcement during civil disorder, fell prey to the persistent lies about the so-called “stolen election” being spread daily by Donald Trump and the rightwing network that served him, his attorney Joseph Hurley said during a video hearing on Thursday. Antonio spent the six months before the riots mainlining Fox News while unemployed, Hurley said, likening the side effects of such a steady diet of misinformation to a mental health syndrome.“Fox television played constantly,” he said. “He became hooked with what I call ‘Foxitis’ or ‘Foxmania’, and became interested in the political aspect and started believing what was being fed to him.”Antonio’s segment was somehow only the second most notable part of the hearing. Another defendant shouted obscenities, sending the proceedings into near chaos at one point.Hurley’s argument calls to mind the infamous “the devil made me do it” defense, although you might argue the devil has nothing on the prolific manipulators at Fox News. And while there is certainly an element of believability to the harmful nature of persistent rightwing propaganda effectively manipulating a person’s ability to distinguish fact from reality – I’ve written here and in my newsletter about something I only half-jokingly refer to as “Fox News brain cancer”, something like a shared psychotic disorder that slowly sucks the life out of people and ruins their ability to connect with their families – it remains to be seen whether or not there is any legal merit to such a claim. Legal experts I’ve talked to certainly don’t think so.Multiple videos obtained by the FBI from the day of the riot appear to show Antonio as especially active in the chaos. He is seen wearing a bulletproof vest featuring a patch of the anti-government extremist group the Three Percenters. At one point in video footage he can be seen shouting at officers: “You want war? We got war. 1776 all over again.” It was a revolutionary sentiment spread by radical rightwing congresswoman Lauren Boebert and others on the day.Elsewhere, Antonio is seen with a riot shield that appeared to be stolen from law enforcement, squirting water on an officer being dragged into a crowd, stealing one’s gas mask, and jumping through a broken window into the Capitol.Fox News has continued to spread misinformation about what happened that day.The network is being sued for billions of dollars for by two voting machine companies, Smartmatic and Dominion, for spreading lies about their role in the “theft” of the election. More

Arizona Republicans are examining whether there is bamboo fiber in ballots that were used in the 2020 election, an activist assisting with the ongoing audit of the ballots told reporters this week. The latest claim underscores how rightwing conspiracy theories continue to fuel doubt about the results of the results.“There’s accusation that 40,000 ballots were flown in to Arizona and it was stuffed into the box and it came from the south-east part of the world, Asia, and what they’re doing is to find out whether there’s bamboo in the paper,” John Brakey, a longtime election audit advocate, told reporters.John Brakey, an official helping oversee the audit of the 2020 Arizona election, says auditors are looking for bamboo fibers because of a baseless accusation that 40K ballots from Asia were smuggled here. #AzAuditPool pic.twitter.com/57UOBYIehg— Dennis Welch (@dennis_welch) May 5, 2021
Brakey told reporters he didn’t personally believe auditors would find bamboo fibers.“I do think it’s somewhat of a waste of time, but it will help unhinge people,” Brakey said on Wednesday. “They’re not gonna find bamboo … If they do, I think we need to know, don’t you?”The search for bamboo fibers illustrates how the latest GOP audit of all 2.1m ballots cast in Maricopa county, home to a majority of Arizona voters, is elevating absurd claims about the 2020 election. After election day, rightwing activists falsely claimed that China had imported ballots to tip the election for Biden and that those ballots could be identified because there was bamboo in the paper. Earlier, workers were using UV lights to examine ballots; while the purpose of doing so was never clear, there was a conspiracy theory after the election that Trump had watermarked ballots (the UV examinations have stopped).There are about a dozen tables on the audit floor at Veterans Memorial Coliseum where auditors are taking pictures of ballots and then running them under microscopic cameras that are supposed to provide high-quality images of the ballots. Those images are supposed to help auditors verify the authenticity of the ballots by allowing them to examine fibers, as well as folds in the paper and ink marks on ballots.Experts have expressed concern about whether this method is a reliable way of identifying fraud.Ken Bennett, the liaison between the auditors and the Arizona senate, said in an interview he wasn’t sure if auditors were looking for bamboo fibers specifically.Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletter“I think that’s more of a euphemism for saying ‘we’re looking for everything related to the paper so that we can verify that the ballots are authentic,’” he told the Guardian. “They’re looking for folds in the paper. They’re looking for where the ovals are marked, is there a little bit of an indentation or was the mark made by a Xerox machine? It’s just kind of a general expression for ‘we’re checking the paper and the folds and everything to make sure that these are authentic ballots.’”The comment came amid increasing scrutiny of the audit, which many experts say is not credible and will only further undermine confidence in the 2020 race. The justice department sent a letter to the Arizona senate president, Karen Fann, on Wednesday expressing concern that the audit may be running afoul of federal laws regarding ballot custody and voter intimidation (during a separate part of the audit, workers will reportedly knock on voters’ door to confirm their 2020 vote).Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s top election official, sent a letter to Bennett on Wednesday expressing concern over how the audit is being run. She claimed that auditors did not have a clear process for tallying ballots, left laptops unattended, and clear procedures were not in place to hire unbiased counters. “Either do it right, or don’t do it at all,” she wrote.One of the people who spread the lie about China dumping ballots, according to Slate, was Javon Pulitzer, a treasure hunter and inventor, who is reportedly assisting with the Maricopa county audit. Though it’s not clear in what capacity Pulitzer is assisting, Brakey told reporters on Tuesday that the machines capturing the microscopic images of the ballots were linked to Pulitzer. “This guy is nuts,” he said. “He’s a fraudster … It’s ridiculous that we’re doing some of this.” More

In a new book, the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren suggests part of the reason for her failure in the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination lay in the party’s reluctance to nominate another woman.“I had to run against the shadows of Martha and Hillary,” Warren writes in Persist, which will be published on Tuesday, the Washington Post reported.Hillary Clinton, a former New York senator and secretary of state, lost the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump.Martha Coakley, an attorney general of Massachusetts, lost a 2010 election for a US Senate seat long held by Ted Kennedy, to Scott Brown, and a 2014 gubernatorial election to Charlie Baker.Both women started as favourites but suffered losses which dealt crushing blows to Democrats on the national stage.Warren led the 2020 Democratic primary early on. In her book, the Post said, she repeats a conversation with her husband, Bruce Mann, who said: “Babe, you could actually do this. You could be president.” Warren also writes about she imagined her inauguration.But she did not win any states and withdrew on 5 March. With most of the rest of the field, she endorsed Joe Biden against the progressive standard bearer, Bernie Sanders. Biden went on to beat Trump convincingly but Warren was passed over for vice-president and a cabinet post.On the page, Warren attributes some of the blame for her defeat to a failure to explain how she would pay for her ambitious progressive proposals, particularly on expanding healthcare.She also reportedly “offers a heavy dose of praise for allies and competitors and little score-settling or tale-telling”, calling Biden a “steady, decent man” and Sanders “fearless and determined”.The Post said Warren’s book “glosses over” a clash with Sanders over whether he told her a woman could not beat Trump. Warren says he did. Sanders says he did not.Warren considers a debate in Nevada in which she assailed the former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg over his behaviour towards women and compared him to Trump. Warren, the Post said, writes that she was surprised Bloomberg did not immediately respond.“Like so many women in so many settings, I found myself wondering if he had even heard me,” she writes.Warren’s book, her third, also considers a previously disclosed incident at the University of Houston when she says a male colleague tried to grope her, and its effect on her academic career.The book’s title comes from a famous clash with Mitch McConnell in 2017. Attempting to silence Warren during debate, the then Republican majority leader said: “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”The Post said text on the back of Warren’s book says it is about “the fight that lies ahead”.“Warren offers few hints on whether she might run again for president,” the paper said. “At 71, she is younger than Biden and could plausibly launch another campaign in 2024, particularly if he does not seek a second term.” More

Mitt Romney was loudly booed at the Utah Republican party convention on Saturday, and called a ‘traitor’ and a ‘communist’ as he tried to speak. ‘Aren’t you embarrassed?’ the Utah senator asked the crowd of 2,100 delegates at the Maverik Center in West Valley City. ‘I’m a man who says what he means, and you know I was not a fan of our last president’s character issues.’

Mitt Romney booed and called ‘traitor’ at Utah Republican convention More

The US Department of Homeland Security on Monday announced an internal review to address the threat of domestic violent extremism within the sprawling federal agency.Homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said senior DHS officials would explore ways to detect and prevent extremism within.The government agency has a huge range of functions under its umbrella, ranging from the Secret Service, transport security, and an office countering weapons of mass destruction, as well as the US Coast Guard and the country’s primary immigration enforcement agencies.“Domestic violent extremism poses the most lethal and persistent terrorism-related threat to our country today,” Mayorkas said.“As we work to safeguard our nation, we must be vigilant in our efforts to identify and combat domestic violent extremism within both the broader community and our own organization.”DHS did not cite any specific incidents in announcing the review and did not immediately respond to questions about the review.The agency has increased its focus on domestic extremism since Democrat Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election and took office in January.Past incidents include a Coast Guard lieutenant who was accused of being a domestic terrorist and was convicted on weapons and drug charges last year.Shortly after Biden took office, DHS issued a rare terrorism bulletin warning of the lingering potential for violence from people motivated by antigovernment sentiment after the election.This suggested that the 6 January 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol in Washington DC, by extremist supporters of Donald Trump, incited by the outgoing Republican president and for which he was impeached for an historic second time, may embolden extremists and set the stage for additional attacks.The agency also directed state, local and tribal agencies receiving annual DHS grants to direct 7.5% of the funds toward addressing the threat from domestic extremism. More

Former president George W Bush revealed in an interview with People magazine that he didn’t vote for either the Republican incumbent Donald Trump or Democrat Joe Biden in the November 2020 presidential election. Instead, he wrote in Condoleezza Rice.Rice, who served as secretary of state for Bush from 2005 to 2009, was aware of the write-in. But, “She told me she would refuse to accept the office,” Bush shared.This revelation comes amid a promotional book tour for Bush’s new compilation of oil paintings depicting American immigrants and their stories.It’s all in an effort, Bush says, to soften hearts for compassionate immigration reforms after several years of harsh and “frightening” anti-immigrant rhetoric, mostly from his own Republican party.Earlier this week, Bush criticized the GOP, calling current actors in the party “isolationist, protectionist and, to a certain extent, nativist”. Bush told People that he “painted with too broad a brush” and excluded “a lot of Republicans who believe we can fix the problem”.But the former president is not without his own history of faults, and his journey to rehabilitation after a devastating presidency built upon the “war on terror” isn’t as well received by many as one would think.Bush’s legacy includes the illegal invasion of Iraq in search of non-existent weapons of mass destruction, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. He resisted LGBTQ+ rights, botched the government response to Hurricane Katrina and presided over the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. More