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    Donald Trump signs Covid-19 relief and spending bill

    Donald Trump has abruptly signed a $900 billion Covid-19 relief and spending bill, ending days of drama over his refusal to accept the bipartisan deal that will deliver long-sought cash to businesses and individuals and avert a federal government shutdown.Without the legislation, the government would have shut down on Tuesday and millions of Americans would have lost eviction protections and unemployment benefits. His delay in signing the bill has already allowed crucial unemployment aid programs to lapse.Trump blindsided members of both parties and upended months of negotiations when he demanded last week that the package – already passed by the House and Senate by large margins and believed to have Trump’s support – be revised to include larger relief checks and scaled-back spending.But on Sunday night, while vacationing in Florida, Trump released a statement saying he had signed the bill, and it was his “responsibility to protect the people of our country from the economic devastation and hardship” caused by the coronavirus.Signing the bill into law prevents another crisis of Trump’s own creation and ends a standoff with his own party during the final days of his administration. It was unclear what, if anything, Trump accomplished with his delay, beyond angering all sides and empowering Democrats to continue their push for higher relief checks, which his own party opposes.Trump had received the bill last Thursday and his decision to delay signing it allowed unemployment benefits for millions of Americans to expire. The lapsed benefits will not restart until the first week of January.In the statement, Trump said he would still send a “redlined” version of the bill to Congress highlighting changes he wanted to the legislation. There is no indication Congress plans to act on these changes, in part because Trump’s presidency ends in a few weeks.Trump ended the statement by saying “much more money is coming,” although he provided nothing to back this promise.Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell welcomed Trump’s signing of the bill. “I am glad the American people will receive this much-needed assistance as our nation continues battling this pandemic,” the Kentucky Republican said.Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it was a “downpayment on what is needed” adding: “Now, the president must immediately call on congressional Republicans to end their obstruction and to join him and Democrats in support of our stand-alone legislation to increase direct payment checks to $2,000.”Democratic lawmakers, who have a majority in the House of Representatives and have long wanted $2,000 relief checks, hope to use a rare point of agreement with Trump to advance the proposal – or at least put Republicans on record against it – in a vote on Monday afternoon.It was not immediately clear why Trump changed his mind as his resistance to the massive legislative package promised a chaotic final stretch of his presidency.White House officials have been tight-lipped about Trump’s thinking but a source familiar with the situation cited by Reuters said that some advisers had urged him to relent because they did not see the point of refusing.Republican officials were relieved that Trump had backed away from his veiled veto threat, saying it should help Republican Senate candidates David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in the Georgia runoff elections on 5 January that will determine control of the Senate.Republican representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois said too much was at stake for Trump to “play this old switcheroo game”.“I don’t get the point,” he said. “I don’t understand what’s being done, why, unless it’s just to create chaos and show power and be upset because you lost the election.”Washington had been reeling since Trump turned on the deal, without warning, after it had won sweeping approval in both houses of Congress and after the White House had assured Republican leaders that Trump would support it.The bill laid unsigned on his desk since Christmas Day as the president, who was mostly silent through weeks of intense negotiations, spent the weekend at the Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach.Instead, he assailed the bill’s plan to provide $600 Covid-19 relief checks to most Americans – insisting it should be $2,000 – and took issue with spending included in an attached $1.4 trillion government funding bill to keep the federal government operating through September.And already, his opposition has had consequences, as two federal programs providing unemployment aid expired on Saturday.Lauren Bauer of the Brookings Institution had calculated that at least 11 million people would lose aid immediately as a result of Trump’s failure to sign the legislation; millions more would exhaust other unemployment benefits within weeks.How and when people are affected by the lapse depends on the state they live in, the program they are relying on and when they applied for benefits.In some states, people on regular unemployment insurance will continue to receive payments under a program that extends benefits when the jobless rate surpassed a certain threshold, said Andrew Stettner, an unemployment insurance expert and senior fellow at the Century Foundation think tank.About 9.5 million people, however, had been relying on the pandemic unemployment assistance program that expired altogether Saturday. That program made unemployment insurance available to freelancers, gig workers and others normally not eligible. After receiving their last checks, those recipients will not be able to file for more aid, Stettner said.Joe Biden, who won November’s presidential election and who will be sworn in as Trump’s successor on 20 January, accused him of an “abdication of responsibility” in a statement on Saturday.The relief bill wrangles come as the coronavirus pandemic continues to worsen in the US, with medical experts joining Biden in predicting that the darkest days lay ahead.“We very well might see a post-seasonal, in the sense of Christmas, New Year, surge,” Dr Anthony Fauci, the US head of infectious diseases, told CNN on Sunday. More

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    Georgia Senate runoff elections: a guide for non-Americans on how they work and why they matter

    On 5 January the US state of Georgia will vote, again, on who to send to the Senate.The control of the Senate is up for grabs, and thus the prospects for the Biden administration – at least for the next two years. As millions of dollars and hundreds of campaigners descend on the state, here is an explainer about what is happening.What is at stake?Two seats are up for grabs. Republicans hold 50 of the 100 seats, and Democrats hold 48. There are 46 formally party-aligned and two independents – Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont – who caucus with the Democrats. When there is a 50-50 tie, the deciding vote is cast by the vice president. That will be Democrat Kamala Harris after the Biden administration is sworn in on 20 January.If Democrats can win both seats they will control the Senate.A Senate majority is crucial in deciding a range of legislative changes, cabinet appointments, potential presidential impeachments and nominations to the supreme court. Republicans have controlled the Senate since 2014.The Democrats have a majority in the House, so a Democratic Senate majority would make Joe Biden’s next two years much easier. Conversely a Republican-controlled Senate under majority leader Mitch McConnell would be able to block much of his agenda, just as it did with former president Barack Obama’s. Biden has a history of attempting compromise across the aisle and could try to entice one or more Republicans on individual votes, but given McConnell’s history of obstructionism that seems a distant prospect. With so much hanging on the result, money has been pouring in to the state to support both sides. More than US$400m was spent on political ads by the middle of December, most going to the two Republicans.Today in FocusThe Georgia Senate runoffSorry your browser does not support audio – but you can download here and listen https://audio.guim.co.uk/2020/05/05-61553-gnl.fw.200505.jf.ch7DW.mp300:00:0000:00:00Who are the candidates?Both Georgia seats are contested between one Democratic candidate and one Republican.One race pitches Republican David Perdue, incumbent senator since 2015, against Democrat Jon Ossoff, a former journalist, who is only 33.Their battle has been vitriolic at times, Ossoff repeatedly calling Perdue a crook and referring to investigations into Perdue’s alleged insider trading.But Perdue has mostly not risen to the bait, and he declined to meet Ossoff in their scheduled TV debate earlier this month, leaving Ossoff to make his points on an empty podium.The other, much more colourful, race is between Republican Kelly Loeffler, a seriously wealthy former businesswoman, and Democrat Rev Raphael Warnock.Warnock, bidding to become Georgia’s first black senator, is a pastor at the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King held the same position. A long-time civil rights campaigner, he is a powerful orator in the tradition of King, and a strong supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement.As a result he has been denounced as a “radical liberal” by his opponent, Loeffler, at every possible opportunity, but has responded in disarming campaign ads by accusing Loeffler of having nothing positive to say about herself and stressing how much he loves puppies.Loeffler ran into controversy when she criticised players from the WNBA team she owns – the Atlanta Dream – over their support for Black Lives Matter, saying BLM had “Marxist foundations”.Loeffler is also technically an incumbent – she was appointed an interim senator on 6 January after former Republican senator Johnny Isakson resigned due to ill health.Why are they runoffs?Georgia state law requires runoffs in both elections because no candidate in either seat reached 50% in the November election.For the Loeffler-Warnock seat, the vacancy was created by the resignation of a sitting senator.This meant the November vote was contested by 20 people, in what is known as a “blanket” or “jungle” primary, which is to say it was almost always going to a runoff, with the top two from the first round going through. In that blanket primary, Loeffler also faced strong competition from moderate Republican congressman Doug Collins, and Warnock competed against a range of Democrats.Warnock topped the blanket primary with 32.9%, Loeffler came second with 25.9% and Collins came third with 19.95%. The top two – Warnock and Loeffler – then advanced to the runoff.In the other seat, contested by Perdue and Ossoff, the 2.32% of the vote won by Libertarian party candidate Shane T Hazel was enough to ensure that neither main party candidate reached 50% in a tight race: Perdue received 49.73% and Ossoff 47.95%.Who is likely to win?A Democrat has not won a Senate race in Georgia in 20 years, so the odds of winning two at the same time do not look great.However, Biden won the state in the November presidential election, the first time in 30 years a Democratic candidate had done so.How the outcome of the presidential race will affect the runoffs is the great unknown. Will traditionally Republican voters who rejected Donald Trump return to the party to ensure the Biden agenda is tempered by Republican control of the Senate? Or will Trump’s insistence on continuing to campaign in Georgia on the basis that the election was a fraud – and tying the Senate candidates to that cause – again motivate Democratic voters to turn out in high numbers?As in the presidential election, voting is not compulsory – so turnout will be a huge concern for both camps.A few more younger voters will be eligible to vote in January. Anyone who turns 18 on or before 5 January is eligible to vote, according to the Georgia Voter Guide. Registration to vote closed on 7 December.What do the polls say?By 24 December the poll average compiled by FiveThirtyEight had Perdue ahead of Ossoff by 0.5%, but Warnock leading Loeffler by 0.6%. Real Clear Politics on 22 December gave the Republicans slightly better figures, with Perdue up by 1% and Loeffler by 0.2%, but the numbers for the Democrats were improving over the past week or so with both agencies.Both polling outfits came under sustained criticism over the presidential election when they drastically underestimated Republican support in some states.When will we know the result?It depends how close the races are. The first Ossoff-Perdue race from November was so close that the result was not known for three days, but under most circumstances the result should be apparent on the night. More

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    Trump fed our worst instincts. His global legacy is toxic and immoral

    How much damage did Donald Trump do around the world, can it be repaired, and did he accomplish anything of lasting significance? Assessing the international legacy of the 45th US president is not so much a conventional survey of achievement and failure. It’s more like tracking the rampages of a cantankerous rogue elephant that leaves a trail of random destruction and shattered shibboleths in its wake. Last week’s wild pardoning spree is a case in point.First, the big picture. Trump’s confrontational manner, combined with his “America First” agenda, seriously undermined transatlantic relations and US global leadership. Joe Biden promises to set this right, but it will not be easy. France’s Emmanuel Macron exploited US introspection to advance ideas of European autonomy and integration. Leaders in the UK, Hungary and Poland cynically flattered Trump for their own political purposes.Trump’s ill-disguised hostility left deep scars in Germany, the most important European ally. This apparent phobia, fed by Berlin’s large trade surplus and relatively low defence spending, had a misogynistic tinge. He was, on occasion, unbelievably rude to chancellor Angela Merkel. A recent Pew poll found only 34% of Germans think US relations are in good shape.“Transatlantic relations worsened exponentially under Trump because of his open disdain for the European Union, his often belligerent interactions with EU leaders, and his vocal support for Brexit,” new analysis by the International Institute for Strategic Studies says. Yet divergences were already evident pre-Trump, it notes. George W Bush’s Iraq war was deeply unpopular in Europe. Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia” made old friends feel unloved.All that said, Nato not only survived Trump’s constant criticisms; in some respects, its original purpose – deterring Russia – was reinforced by deployments of additional US forces in eastern Europe and the Baltic republics. Trump’s demand that European allies spend more on defence was not unreasonable, although his bullying brought only limited change.His lies eroded trust in democracy and the rule of law, at home and abroadTrump’s habit of thinking transactionally, not strategically, had a disastrous impact in Asia and elsewhere. He treated loyal allies Japan and South Korea with disdain – especially over misconceived talks with North Korea. He indulged rabble-rousers such as Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines president, antagonised Pakistan, yet still failed to significantly enhance ties with India.The fierce mutual animosity currently poisoning US-China relations is Trump’s most troublesome geopolitical legacy. Before 2017, there was still an outside chance that the old and new superpowers could find ways to get along. That’s gone. China is now viewed by Americans of all stripes as the No 1 threat. Beijing’s aggressive leadership is much at fault. But Trump’s trade and tech wars, Taiwan brinkmanship and “Wuhan virus” rhetoric made everything worse.Biden has bought into the China fight, which looks set to continue. At the same time, he must repair the harm caused by Trump’s inexplicably deferential attitude towards Vladimir Putin in Russia – the backdrop to the Mueller inquiry and his impeachment. This puzzle has yet to be solved. It surfaced again last week when Trump downplayed Russia’s latest cyber attack.In appraising Trump’s foreign policy record, supporters point to his brokering of new ties between Israel and Arab regimes – including the grandly named Abraham Accords. If these deals lead to a broader, just settlement of the Palestine-Israel conflict, claims of “historic” success may ultimately be justified. To date, Trump’s main contribution has been to help entrench Benjamin Netanyahu, a hard-right prime minister opposed by a majority of Israel’s voters, who is on trial for alleged corruption.In conflict zones around the world, Trump’s America was largely absent without leave. He vowed to end “forever wars”. But in Afghanistan his peace efforts camouflaged a dishonourable scramble for the exit. He betrayed Kurdish allies in Syria, falsely claimed to have beaten Isis, and ceded the battlefield to Bashar al-Assad, Russia and Turkey. By wrecking the Iran nuclear deal, he made a dangerous problem infinitely worse.Trump fans such as Fred Fleitz, writing for Fox News, conjure a mirror image of these shameful derelictions. Trump “restored American leadership on the world stage, put the interests of the American people ahead of the dictates of globalist foreign policy elites, and kept our nation out of unnecessary wars”, Fleitz wrote. Biden, he predicted, “will surrender US sovereignty to the United Nations and Europe” and allow Russia and China to “walk all over the US”.It’s difficult to make sense of such seemingly distorted views. But that, in a nutshell, is the great, bifurcating conundrum bequeathed by the Trump era. Trump was a catastrophe for the climate crisis and the environment, for the Covid emergency, for racial and gender equality, for the global fight against poverty and hunger, and for the UN and multilateralism in general. In a connected world, he cut the cord.Trump encouraged authoritarian “strongman” leaders such as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Egypt’s dictator Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, and hooligans such as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro. He coddled autocrats such as Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman and Russia’s Putin. Worse, his lies eroded trust in democracy and the rule of law, at home and abroad. Yet even as, properly and electorally vanquished, he slowly departs, he continues to antagonise and divide – and to be lionised by the right.Maybe it’s not that hard to see why. Trump’s personal brand of viciousness appealed to every worst human instinct, justified every vile prejudice, excused every mean and unkind thought. His is a blind ignorance that resonates with those who will not or cannot see. Falsehood is always easier than truth. For these reasons, Trump’s global legacy is Trumpism. It will live on – toxic, immoral, ubiquitous and ever-threatening. More

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    As the White House changes hands, so will Fox News’ support of the presidency

    When Joe Biden is sworn in as president on 20 January, cable news viewers may witness one of the most dramatic 180-degree turns in history.
    After four years of slavishly promoting the president, Fox News is expected to pump on the brakes within seconds of the inauguration ceremony.
    All of a sudden, the person in the White House is not a Republican. More than that, the network can no longer rely on the willingness of the president or his aides to call into Fox News any time of the day or night.
    The rightwing TV channel, and its big name hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, will spend the next four years as the party of the opposition. The network has done this before, of course – the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency weren’t that long ago – but Biden presents a different challenge.
    “Of course we can expect it to be relentlessly negative, but it’s a challenge on some levels, because he’s a 78-year-old white man, fairly moderate history,” said Heather Hendershot, a professor of film and media at MIT who studies conservative and rightwing media.
    “In the past they attacked Hillary Clinton very hard not only because she was liberal, but obviously there was some underlying sexism and misogyny there – and obviously the fact that Barack Obama was African American was central to rightwing attacks on him, either implicitly or explicitly, including on Fox News.”
    That’s not to say Biden’s government will escape attack, even if he dodges the worst.
    Kamala Harris will be the first Black vice-president, and could become a target for Fox News’ hosts. If Democrats win the two Senate runoff elections in Georgia, the Senate will be split 50-50, and Harris will cast the deciding vote.
    “[If that happens] she’s going to be out there front and center as a tie-breaker in Congress over and over again,” Hendershot said.
    “And every time that happens that is a way to tangentially attack Biden – it gives [Fox News and other rightwing outlets] a kind of ‘red meat’ to attack Kamala Harris, because she is both a woman and a person of color.”
    Biden claims he has nominated “the most diverse cabinet anyone in American history has ever announced”, with Janet Yellen set to be the first woman to be secretary of the Treasury, while Lloyd Austin, if confirmed, poised to become the first Black defence secretary.
    Pete Buttigieg, an occasional Fox News guest, is set to be the first openly gay cabinet secretary as head of transport.
    Fox News has already been attacking another diverse set of Democrats: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and other female, non-white members of Congress.
    Matthew Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a media watchdog, said that’s a theme that has continued to dominate, even since Biden became the president-elect.
    “A lot of what we’re seeing right now is less of a focus on Joe Biden himself and more of this idea that he will somehow be a puppet for other figures that they find easier to attack – whether that is Kamala Harris, or Bernie Sanders, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” Gertz said.
    “That is an angle they pursued quite a bit during the campaign, and it’s something they’ve focused on during the transition as well.” More

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    Trump stain likely to dog officials' post-administration job prospects

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    In normal times it would go to the top of anyone’s curriculum vitae or résumé. Serving in the White House has typically been a passport to a lucrative job on a corporate board, in the lobbying industry or at a prestigious Washington thinktank.
    But alumni of Donald Trump’s administration could be in for a rude awakening. The outgoing president proved so disruptive and divisive that those perceived to have been his enablers may find themselves given the cold shoulder as they seek alternative employment.
    “Those people will carry this stain with them for the rest of their lives,” said Moe Vela, a former senior adviser to Vice-President Joe Biden. “The further we get away from his tenure, the more historians, political scientists, political operatives and just history itself will uncover, reveal and continue to demonstrate just how corrupt this was. And as that continues, the stain will only grow darker and larger.”
    Presidential transitions can be brutal affairs. Officials who have become accustomed to working at America’s most famous address, weighing in on economic and national security issues that reverberate around the world, suddenly find themselves cast out into the cold of Washington after the inauguration of the new president-elect on a bleak January day.
    But there is usually a support network in place, including nearby K Street, the home of political lobbying firms, and an array of thinktanks in the capital and beyond. Condoleezza Rice, former secretary of state under President George W Bush, is now director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, which also gave safe harbour to Trump alumni Jim Mattis and HR McMaster.
    White House press secretaries can prosper in the media or corporate world. Jay Carney, who was Barack Obama’s spokesman from 2011 to 2014, is a senior vice-president and head of public relations for Amazon. His successor, Josh Earnest, who had a spell as an NBC News and MSNBC analyst, is now senior vice-president and chief communications officer at United Airlines. More

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    The Republican party has ushered in a dark Christmas, indeed. We deserve better | Hamilton Nolan

    Santa will not be pleased. Not to mention Jesus. That guy is gonna be pissed. When they find out what’s happened here, America is going to be in for a very dark Christmas indeed.I am not one of the unfortunates so poisoned by capitalism’s warped inhalation of the holiday season that they have grown cynical about the entire enterprise. My family takes Christmas very seriously. From a very young age I learned that this time of year was not about orgies of shopping or stewing in your contempt for your far-flung relatives, but rather about putting our dormant innate generosity into practice. The Christmas spirit is love. Our bitter cynicism should properly be oriented not at the Christmas spirit itself, but rather at those who corrupt it.Three hundred thousand Americans have died from Covid this year. Well over 200,000 of them died unnecessarily. Had our government managed this public health crisis in a mature and rational way, the deaths would be a fraction of what they are. Our government chose not to do so. Our leering and stupid leader chose to make the wearing of masks into a defining political issue – not out of necessity, or for any financial gain, or out of adherence to any philosophy, but out of aggressive stupidity, laziness and self-rationalization. Usually, the Republican party screws regular people because someone stands to get rich on it. In this case, it was only because they formed a coward’s puppet line behind an awful leader with a loud voice. In every community in America, there are people lying dead because their elected officials were scared of being tweeted at by a former reality show host.Merry Christmas, America.Tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs this year through no fault of their own. Tens of thousands of small businesses, each one representing the dreams and ambitions of a human being and the employment of many others, have failed this year through no fault of their own. The money that our government appropriated to carry all of these people and businesses through this natural disaster ran out months ago, and nothing more has been forthcoming, even as we watch our friends and neighbors sink into bankruptcy and food insecurity and desperation.Many other nations have paid workers to stay home, relieving financial pressures on employers and employees alike. Republicans in Congress have refused to do this, because the stock market has stayed high, and also because they don’t care. Our incompetent and callous Republican leaders have ordered shutdowns without providing an adequate safety net, thus causing predictable public backlash against the shutdowns, which Republicans have been happy to encourage, because it directs public ire away from them and onto public health professionals. Idiocy in the White House has combined with the wealth-worshiping Republican Senate to produce the worst of both worlds: a raging preventable public health disaster and an economic catastrophe from which the very rich have been insulated.Your loved ones can die, your business can collapse, your job can evaporate, your unemployment benefits can dry up, your stimulus checks can disappear, and in return your elected leaders will offer you sneering jokes about masks and lies about who won the election. The rest, they will mostly ignore.Merry Christmas, America.Donald Trump is a vapid and pathetic man controlled in every case by his own worst impulses, but he is not the biggest villain of 2020. Without the entire superstructure of the Republican party behind him – voting for him, campaigning for him, debasing themselves before him, praising his stupid ideas and supporting him politically – he would not be in a position to cause hundreds of thousands of deaths. There is a long, straight line that runs from the wink-and-nod racist Southern Strategy of Richard Nixon through the deregulation and union-busting of Reagan and up to the deadly narcissism of Trump. When a political party is willing to tell any lie and demonize anyone in order to protect the right of the rich to have everything, it will eventually find that it has become the home of cranks and fascists. The Republican party has spent decades stoking malignant ignorance in service of greed, and it has now been devoured by it. What afflicts us now is not just a virus, but a national philosophy lovingly tended by many generations of conquerors that prizes avarice and calls it individualism.We are all in this pandemic together. Sickness passes from person to person with no regard for identity. Economic decline seizes every city and state at once. Overwhelming crises like these can be catalysts for unity. Shared pain is also an opportunity for shared love. Suffering so widespread can open everyone’s eyes to the common fate of humanity, and our responsibility to support one another in good times and bad.But that is not what America is getting out of this crisis. We are getting the suffering without the sharing, and the pain without the promise of mutual support. Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus, a man who told people to love their neighbors and give their wealth to the poor; it is embodied by Santa, a man who rewards generosity with more generosity, and vows to carry gifts to the homes of everyone no matter who they are. And yet the people who are loudest about Christmas – those showing off the biggest tree, carrying the most ostentatious Bible – are the same people who have chosen to allow hundreds of thousands of us to die, rather than do what needs to be done for public health, and have chosen to allow millions of us to sink into poverty, rather than do what needs to be done for public welfare. They have chosen this because they believe that this is the path that will maximize their own power. That is their present to you, and they really don’t care if you like it.Yes, Virginia, there is a “War on Christmas”. But the Republicans are the ones waging it. And the Christmas spirit, I’m sorry to say, is losing. More

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    Senior Republican says party’s final election challenge will ‘go down like a shot dog’

    Donald Trump has reportedly acknowledged in private that his attempt to overturn the election result will fail, while a senior Republican in the Senate said on Monday a challenge coming in the House of Representatives will “go down like a shot dog”.But amid reports of a president unhinged – one report said: “We cannot stress enough how unnerved Trump officials are” – and while Trump continued to stoke a Republican civil war by attacking Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, a group of GOP representatives visited the White House to plan one final push to reverse the will of the American people.Congress meets to validate the electoral college result, a 306-232 win for Joe Biden, on 6 January. On Monday, Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama led a delegation of about 12 Republicans to the White House, where they discussed how their challenge to that result will proceed.“It was a back and forth concerning the planning and strategy for January the 6th,” Brooks told Politico, adding: “More and more congressmen and senators are being persuaded that the election was stolen.”There is no evidence that this is the case, and Brooks notably declined to identify any of the supposed doubters. By all the evidence, challenges to the result in the House and the Senate will not have the votes to be sustained.On Monday, No 2 Republican senator John Thune told CNN the move was “going down like a shot dog” and added: “I just don’t think it makes a lot of sense to put everybody through this when you know what the ultimate outcome is going to be.”Nonetheless, Trump continues to make baseless accusations of mass electoral fraud and reportedly to rage against aides he deems insufficiently zealous in his defence. According to the news site Axios, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and chief of staff Mark Meadows are prominent among such hapless targets.So is McConnell, whom Trump claims to have saved in his re-election fight this year, the president sending a slide to Republicans in Congress which purported to show the restorative effect of a presidential tweet and robocall.“Sadly, Mitch forgot,” the slide said. “He was the first one off the ship!”The wisdom or otherwise of attacking the Republican Senate leader two weeks before run-off elections in Georgia that will decide control of the chamber, and with it much of Biden’s chances of legislative success, seems lost on the president for now.Meadows was once a member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus in the House, and his former allies were among those visiting the White House on Monday. Mike Pence, who will preside over the joint session of Congress on 6 January, also attended the meeting.Trump is even reported to have soured on the vice-president, his loyal lieutenant since joining the ticket in 2016. The president is reported to believe Pence is “backing away” from him – notably, a claim advanced in a recent ad by the Lincoln Project, a group of dissident Republicans.“When Mike Pence is running away from you,” the ad says, “you know it’s over.”Among representatives reported to have been at the conspiratorial huddle at the White House was Jim Jordan of Ohio, a renowned attack dog so loyal to Trump that he has claimed never to have heard the president lie. (The Washington Post’s count of Trump’s lies in office stands at 26,000.) Also there was Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, an open supporter of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory preparing to take a seat in Congress.Brooks said the Republicans were “trying to make sure that we understand what [Pence’s] view of the procedural requirements are, so we can comply with them. Pence will have a tremendous amount of discretion, though I think the rulings he will make will be pretty cut and dry.“It’s still somewhat fluid, since this does not happen very often.”Trump remains actively engaged in the fundamentally anti-democratic campaign. He is said to have spent an hour poring over the details of the 6 January session with the group from Congress.The closer the president gets to removal from office, the more volatile he becomes, and the more wild his invective grows. According to Olivia Nuzzi of New York magazine, since election day White House aides have been “outright avoiding the president out of concern he might end up using any nearby staffer as a human stress ball”.In a meeting at the White House last Friday, Trump is reported to have floated the idea of the arch-conspiracy theorist and lawyer Sidney Powell being appointed a special counsel to investigate voter fraud during the election.According to the New York Times, Trump asked advisers at that gathering about whether the military could be mobilised to “rerun” the election. The idea was the brainchild of Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser pardoned by Trump for lying to the FBI, who was present at the Friday meeting.As Trump digs himself ever further into his “stolen election” rabbit hole, other key figures in his administration are gently but firmly moving in the other direction. William Barr, the US attorney general who has been willing to accommodate many of Trump’s whims, has distanced himself.On Monday Barr bluntly squashed the idea of a special counsel.“If I thought a special counsel at this stage was the right tool, I would name one, but I haven’t and I’m not going to,” he said. More

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    Trump attempt to overturn election is 'nutty and loopy', Romney says

    Donald Trump’s flirtation with declaring martial law in battleground states and appointing a conspiracy theorist as special counsel to help his attempt to overturn defeat by Joe Biden are “really sad” and “nutty and loopy”, Mitt Romney said on Sunday.“He’s leaving Washington with a whole series of conspiracy theories and things that are so nutty and loopy that people are shaking their head wondering what in the world has gotten into this man,” the Utah Republican senator said.Joe Biden won the 3 November election by 306-232 in the electoral college and by more than 7m ballots in the popular vote. Nonetheless, Trump is entertaining outlandish schemes to remain in office, egged on by allies like former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who Trump pardoned for lying to the FBI, and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney.During a Friday meeting at the White House first reported by the New York Times, Trump discussed security clearance for Sidney Powell, a conspiracy-spouting attorney who was cut from Trump’s campaign legal team.It is unclear if Trump will actually attempt to install Powell as a special counsel, a position which the US attorney general, not the president, appoints. Numerous Republicans, from outgoing attorney general William Barr to governors and state officials, have said repeatedly there is no evidence of the mass voter fraud Trump baselessly alleges.“It’s not going to happen,” Romney told CNN. “That’s going nowhere. And I understand the president is casting about trying to find some way to have a different result than the one that was delivered by the American people, but it’s really sad in a lot of respects and embarrassing.“Because the president could right now be writing the last chapter of this administration, with a victory lap with regards to the [Covid-19] vaccine. After all he pushed aggressively to get the vaccine developed and distributed, that’s happening on a quick timeframe. He could be going out and championing this extraordinary success.“Instead … this last chapter suggests what he is going to be known for.”Trump’s campaign and allies have filed around 50 lawsuits alleging voting fraud – almost all have been dismissed. Trump has lost before judges of both parties, including some he appointed, and some of the strongest rebukes have come from conservative Republicans. The supreme court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority and three Trump appointees, has refused to take up cases.Trump has been fuming and peppering allies for options. During the Friday meeting, Giuliani pushed Trump to seize voting machines. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) made clear that it had no authority to do so. It is unclear what such a move could accomplish.Barr told the Associated Press this month the Department of Justice and DHS had looked into claims voting machines “were programmed essentially to skew the election results … and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that”. Paper ballots have been used to verify results, including in Georgia, which performed two audits of its vote tally, confirming Biden’s victory.Flynn went yet further, suggesting Trump could impose martial law and use the military to re-run the election. Chief of staff Mark Meadows and White House counsel Pat Cipollone voiced objections, people familiar with the meeting told news outlets. Trump, who spent much of Saturday tweeting and retweeting electoral fraud claims, responded on Twitter.“Martial law = Fake News,” he wrote. “Just more knowingly bad reporting!”Trump’s grip on the Republican party remains secure, suggesting members in Congress will dutifully raise objections to the electoral college results on 6 January. Such objections will be for political ends and will not in all likelihood succeed in overturning the election. Democrats hold the House and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has indicated he will knock down objections in the Senate.On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Romney, who did better at the polls in his 2012 defeat by Barack Obama than Trump did in 2016 and 2020, was asked if his party could ever escape Trump’s grip.“I believe the Republican party has changed pretty dramatically,” he said. “And by that, I mean that the people who consider themselves Republican and voted for President Trump I think is a different cohort than the cohort that voted for me.“…You look at those that are thinking about running in 2024, [they are] trying to see who can be the most like President Trump. And that suggests that the party doesn’t want to take a different direction.”Josh Hawley of Missouri, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Ted Cruz of Texas are among senators thought likely to run to succeed Trump in the White House, and therefore likely to object to the electoral college results.“I don’t think anyone who’s looking at running in 2024 has the kind of style and shtick that President Trump has,” Romney said. “He has a unique and capable politician … But I think the direction you’re seeing is one that he set out.“I’d like to see a different version of the Republican party. But my side is very small these days … I think we recognise that character actually does count.” More