Evelyn Reynolds

Joe Biden’s first campaign ad of the year focuses on threats to US democracy, timed for release on the anniversary of the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol.In the ad, Biden says that preserving American democracy has been the “central issue of his presidency”. As footage of political violence and rioting shows on screen, the president notes that “there’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy”.“All of us are being asked right now, what will we do to maintain our democracy?” he says.Donald Trump is the overwhelming favorite to win the Republican nomination for November’s presidential election, despite his multitude of legal woes, which include charges linked to the Jan 6 attack.The former president has also struck a notably more extremist tone during his campaign, raising fears he aims to deliberately erode US democratic institutions. Polling has also shown Trump to be in a close race with Biden and leading in some surveys.The Biden attack ad will run nationally and in local markets in swing states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as online.The spot highlights how Trump and his followers are continually working to undermine elections, the Biden-Harris campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said in a news release.“Over the last three years, Maga Republicans haven’t shied away from the Big Lie – they’ve doubled down. This ad serves as a very real reminder that this election could very well determine the very fate of American democracy,” she said.A recent poll by the Washington Post and University of Maryland showed that support for Trump among Republicans has increased since the 6 January attacks.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTheir beliefs on the insurrection itself have softened, the poll showed, with Republicans now less likely to see the attack as violent or Trump as responsible for it. 36% of those polled did not believe Biden was legitimately elected. Still, among independents and Democrats especially, the insurrection is seen as an attack on democracy. More

Any political observer who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that the resignation of Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard University who was driven from her job this week, had nothing to do with plagiarism.There are all sorts of factors that make this obvious: there is the reality that Gay’s field, political science, is a data-driven discipline in which abstracts from one paper are not-infrequently copied as parts of a literature review in another, and that the borrowed phrases and summaries that account for Gay’s “plagiarism” are not crimes of theft but of sloppiness, with little bearing on the originality of her work.There is the fact that Gay’s “plagiarism” scandal arose belatedly, brought up in tenuous relation to a similarly fatuous and opportunistic false claim by the Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik that Gay had abetted antisemitism at Harvard. (The same accusation also led to the ouster, last month, of the University of Pennsylvania president, M Elizabeth Magill).There is the fact that rightwing propagandists, prominently the anti-education crusader Christopher Rufo, openly admitted the pretextual nature of their plagiarism smear against Gay, and frankly spoke of their intention to manipulate the national media into creating a baseless controversy that would drive Gay, Harvard’s first Black president and only the second woman to lead the university, out of her job.But recounting all of this is tedious, and cedes the terms of the debate to the authors of this false controversy–fighting on their territory, arguing the questions they pose, giving good-faith rebuttals to allegations they do not pretend to believe even as they make them. As the sociologist Victor Ray put it, “Accepting the bad-faith framing is a choice to ally oneself with the bad-faith actors.”But this is what much of the mainstream media, over the past weeks of the so-called “controversy” over Gay’s tenure at Harvard, has been doing with unnerving enthusiasm. Between her congressional testimony in December and her resignation on Tuesday, the New York Times alone published more than 60 items about Gay, breathlessly covering alleged plagiarism in her 25-year-old dissertation; CNN joined in, granting credulous coverage to claims that Gay had plagiarized in graduate school and granting airtime to claims made by the likes of Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager and Harvard donor who openly stated that he hoped to dislodge Gay because of his disdain for “DEI”, – the corporate euphemism for racial integration efforts.The flurry of coverage resulted in not so much a clear articulation of alleged misconduct by Gay as a vague fog of ill will that carried stench of scandal. The media seemed assured that Gay had done something wrong: maybe it was about academic integrity, or maybe it was about the supposed antisemitism on campus; maybe it was the racist subtext, all but declared by Gay’s rightwing critics, that a Black woman who attained a position of superlative prestige and authority could necessarily not have done so by merit. The media followed all this as if any of it was real, as if any of it mattered, proving themselves willing to serve as outlets for a rightwing propaganda effort that is wildly cynical, demonstrably sadistic, and avowedly indifferent to the truth.In reality, it is not just that Gay’s ouster has nothing to do with plagiarism: it is that it has nothing to do with Claudine Gay. Her resignation is merely the latest episode in the rightwing’s assault on education – a project that has increased in its virulence and success in recent years, but which has been decades in the making. Republicans hate education, and they have demonstrated this hate in both their policymaking and in the public theater of their cultural grievance.They defund and privatize public schools, and they attempt to make public enemies of teachers; they ban books, and force educators into the closet, and impose abstinence-only sex education. They manipulate Title IX to make universities hostile to women and deferential to rapists; they impose bizarre, invasive and lascivious rules that would compel period tracking and genital inspections for student athletes. They take over colleges and gut departments that might lead students to think critically about social hierarchies; through their partisans on the supreme court, they have now banned affirmative action in admissions. They dox student activists, harass and intimidate professors, and, now, purge administrators. This is the story that the media has been studiously ignoring, preferring to miss the forest of a coordinated anti-education effort for the trees of a flimsy, pretextual citation scandal. One has to ask: what are they so afraid of?It may be that Republicans are hostile to education because they believe that the world they want to usher in – one in which hierarchies of race and gender are entrenched, naturalized and given the force of law – is not possible to impose except on a population that has been kept ignorant. But the fact is that if the university system were as strong an incubator of pro-equality, pro-democracy social forces as the Republican machine seems to think it is, then it would not be so vulnerable to such transparently bad-faith attacks.In reality, the American university is weakened – low on public funding, reliant on underpaid, contingent and dissatisfied academic labor, and subject to the whims of very wealthy donors. In such conditions of precarity and scarcity, true freedom of thought has long been something of an fiction for academics and students alike, who know well, for instance, that they cannot report sexual harassment or openly support Palestinian freedom without inviting harassment or risking their careers.Universities, at their best, remain sites of robust debate and challenging inquiry. But at their worst, they are sites of vampiric labor exploitation, of malign incentives for scholars, and, increasingly, of meddling by ambitious Republican operatives or politically appointed trustees. Gay can be forced to resign for transparently dishonest reasons because universities like Harvard are dependent on bad-faith actors who wanted her gone to pursue their own agendas – and because they lack the will to break this dependence.Something similar might be said of the mainstream media. Many news outlets – much like universities – have been weakened by declines in revenue, and have largely failed to adapt to the rise of an anti-intellectual and anti-democratic right wing that is indifferent to the truth. Instead of covering the malfeasance of these actors, they have anxiously tried to maintain the appearance of neutrality – sometimes at the expense of frankly telling the truth. They, too, are dependent on the good will of the right – in the form of subscribers and sources alike. And they, too, have been manipulated in this dependence, becoming willing to use their platforms and prestige to lend legitimacy to faux controversies that otherwise would have not have any.None of this is to say that Claudine Gay is an especially innocent or admirable figure. It is to say that her character does not much matter: no institution, no social movement, and no profession can survive if its survival depends on the moral perfection of all its main actors. Both the media and the American university system had an opportunity to see the attacks on her in the context of Republicans’ broader anti-education crusade – to treat the right wing’s bad faith for what it really was, and to treat Gay’s missteps for what they really were. They failed.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

Donald Trump memorably compared the New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Eva Perón, the Argentinian first lady known as Evita. But a new book reveals that when the young Latino leftwinger burst on to the US political scene in 2018, one US labour leader made perhaps a more telling comparison – to Bruce Springsteen.“I was floored,” Michael Podhorzer, then political director of the AFL-CIO, told the author Joshua Green. “The best comparison I can make is to the famous Jon Landau line: ‘I’ve seen rock’n’roll’s future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.’”Landau is a journalist who became Springsteen’s manager and producer. He passed his famous judgment in May 1974, after seeing Springsteen play at the Harvard Square Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Then 25, Springsteen went on to sell records by the million and win Grammys by the sackful, becoming widely known as the Boss but maintaining his image as a blue-collar hero, true to his New Jersey roots.In Democratic politics, Ocasio-Cortez – widely known as AOC – has built her own star power while maintaining working-class credentials.In 2018, she was a 28-year-old bartender when she scored a historic upset primary win over Joe Crowley, then 56 and a member of Democratic US House leadership, in a New York City district covering parts of Queens and the Bronx.In a campaign ad, Ocasio-Cortez depicted herself as an ordinary New Yorker, hustling to work on the subway.She described Crowley, in contrast, as “a Democrat who takes corporate money, profits off foreclosure, doesn’t live here, doesn’t send his kids to our schools, doesn’t drink our water or breathe our air”.Green, previously the author of Devil’s Bargain, on Trump’s rise to power, reports Podhorzer’s response in his new book, The Rebels: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle for a New American Politics.A look at three stars of the modern Democratic left, the book will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Podhorzer, Green says, is a union official “who spends his waking hours trying to get voters to care about working people”. Among working people who might appreciate his comparison of Ocasio-Cortez to Springsteen is none other than Crowley, now senior policy director for Dentons, the world’s largest law firm.At a party event on election night in 2018, as he digested the sudden end of his 20-year congressional career, Crowley picked up a guitar and took the stage with a band.“This is for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” he said, launching a cover of Springsteen’s Born to Run.In his epilogue, Green considers a common question: was Ocasio-Cortez born to run for president?Noting how AOC, Warren and Sanders have pushed Democrats left, as evidenced by Joe Biden’s record in office, he writes that Ocasio-Cortez “still gets covered mainly through the lens of ‘the Squad’” – a group of mostly female representatives of color who have achieved prominence on Capitol Hill.“But among the rising generation of Democratic staffers and strategists who will soon run the party, she’s come to be seen as a significant figure in her own right.”Speaking anonymously, a Warren adviser adds: “You can see [AOC] pointing a path toward the future in a way that none of the other Squad members are doing. She’s the one really marking the future of the left in the post-Biden era.” More

When Joe Biden talks on Friday about US democracy on the brink, there’s no doubt that it will be a campaign speech. Maybe the most important one of his life.But the speech will be more than that. It’s intended as a warning and a red alert, delivered on the anniversary of the violent January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.The date was chosen for good reason – to make the point that more mayhem and more flagrant disregard for the rule of law and fair elections, are just around the corner if Donald Trump is re-elected.Can the political media in America get that reality across? Or will their addiction to “horserace” coverage prevail?So far, the signs aren’t particularly promising.A line high up in the New York Times’ advance coverage of what Biden plans to say is typical of the mainstream media’s tone and focus: “The two speeches are part of an effort to redirect attention from Mr. Biden’s low approval numbers and remind Democrats and independent voters of the alternative to his reelection.” (Biden is speaking on Saturday at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and Monday at the South Carolina church where a young white supremacist murdered nine black parishioners in late 2016.)CNN offered an advance headline that emphasized the presidential race, not the message: “Biden opens campaign push …”USA Today did better, putting the emphasis where it belongs: “Biden will mark Jan 6 anniversary with speech warning Trump is a threat to democracy.”We all know there’s a campaign happening. And remember, many readers don’t get beyond the headlines or news alerts. Those bulletins have to be short, true, but they also have to get the larger job done.I’m not suggesting that Biden’s speech be covered as something separate from his presidential campaign. It’s obvious that November’s election and the fragility of American democracy are intertwined.Even Biden campaign officials are making that point. “We are running a campaign like the fate of our democracy depends upon it. Because it does,” campaign manager Julia Chavez Rodriguez has said.But there is another element that is more subtle.“The choice for voters,” Rodriguez said, “will not simply be between competing philosophies of government. The choice will be about protecting our democracy and every American’s fundamental freedom.”That’s where the media gets tripped up. In a constant show of performative neutrality, journalists tend to equalize the unequal, taking coverage down the middle even though that’s not where true fairness lies.Biden, of course, is not a great natural speaker, and perhaps the biggest knock on him is that he’s 81 – and not a young 81.Those factors won’t help, no matter what the media focuses on.But journalists do have an obligation to get beyond delivery and appearances, to get beyond poll numbers and approval numbers – all the things that they are most comfortable with.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe mainstream media is not nearly as comfortable with communicating the larger concepts, even when the stakes are this high.Constantly under attack from the right, they fear looking like they are “in the tank” for a particular candidate or party, so they fall back on those traditional building blocks of coverage – numbers, polls, approval ratings.That may have worked in the past, or at least been relatively unobjectionable. Not any more.Speech coverage is only one part of that. Journalists need to get across to voters in day-to-day coverage – between now and November – what a second Trump presidency would mean.In an NPR interview, former Washington Post executive editor Martin Baron laid out the facts clearly:“He’s the only politician I’ve heard actually talk about suspending the constitution. He’s talked about using the military to suppress entirely legitimate protests using the Insurrection Act. He’s talked about bringing treason charges against the then-outgoing chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. He’s talked about bringing treason charges against Comcast, the owner of NBC and MSNBC. He’s talked explicitly about weaponizing the government against his political enemies. And, of course, he continues to talk about crushing an independent press.”And, as Baron concluded, no editorializing is necessary because “all of those [threats], by nature, by definition, are authoritarian”.That is the message that needs to come across, this weekend and in the months ahead.Reporters and their bosses – both in newsrooms and in glossy corporate offices – should remember that being in favor of democracy isn’t a journalistic crime. In fact, it’s a journalistic obligation.
Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist
This article was updated on 4 January 2024 after Joe Biden’s speech was moved from Saturday to Friday due to an impending winter storm. More

A legislative showdown is brewing in Ohio after Governor Mike DeWine split from his party to veto a bill that would impose substantial new restrictions on the lives of trans children.The bill, HB 68, prohibits doctors from providing gender-affirming care to trans youths. It also blocks transgender female student athletes from participating in girls’ sports.On Friday, DeWine said signing HB 68 into law would signal that “the government knows better what is medically best for a child than the two people who love that child the most: the parents”.Ohio hospitals do not offer gender-affirming care to young patients without the consent of a parent or guardian.“Parents are making decisions about the most precious thing in their life, their child, and none of us should underestimate the gravity and the difficulty of those decisions,” the governor said. “Many parents have told me that their child would be dead today if they had not received the treatment they received from an Ohio children’s hospital.”The veto by DeWine, a Republican, marked a rare victory for LGBTQ+ advocates, who spent the past year battling a historic rise in anti-trans legislation and rhetoric across the United States.Maria Bruno, policy director for Equality Ohio, said the governor’s veto was “a relief for Ohio’s transgender youth, parents, healthcare professionals and educators who can finally take a breath and get back to their lives”.But that relief could be short-lived. Top Ohio Republicans, including the secretary of state, Frank LaRose, are now urging the state legislature to reverse the governor’s decision by overriding his veto.“We have a duty to protect safety and fair competition for female athletes and to protect children from being subjected to permanent, life-altering medical procedures before the age of 18,” LaRose said.The Republican speaker, Jason Stephens, announced this week that the Ohio house would reconvene on 10 January, weeks earlier than scheduled, in an attempt to revive the bill before the official start of the 2024 legislative session. Republicans hold a supermajority in both chambers of the Ohio legislature, meaning Stephens’ push to sidestep the governor is likely to succeed.“It is disappointing that the governor vetoed House Bill 68,” Stephens said. “The bill sponsors, and the house, have dedicated nearly three years to get the bill right.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDespite Stephens’ insistence that HB 68 is a tool to “empower parents and protect children,” hundreds of Ohio families, including the parents of transgender children, have spoken out in fierce opposition to the GOP-backed proposal.Last year, the Ohio house received more than 600 written testimonies from people who oppose the ban on gender-affirming care, compared with just 56 in support of the legislation.In her testimony against the bill, Minna Zelch, the parent of a transgender daughter, asked why she and her husband “are qualified to make other medical decisions for our children, such as if they should have surgery for a broken bone or take ADHD medication, but we’re not qualified to decide if and when they should receive gender care?”Zelch added: “All transgender kids and their families deserve the basic right of deciding what medical care they receive.” More

When Angela Stepancic decided to have a baby with her wife, the couple were full of hope. Her partner was keen to carry their child, so the pair began looking for potential sperm donors to help them conceive. But they soon hit a problem: at the four main cryobanks in the US, there were only a dozen Black sperm donors. The reporter and assistant professor of journalism Lisa Armstrong explains to Hannah Moore that Black women in the US are twice as likely to face infertility, and half as likely to seek help for it. The lack of donors is one more barrier Black people can face when trying to start a family. There is too little research into the reasons for the shortage, explains Armstrong, but a complicated application system and invasive questioning are thought to be part of the problem, as well as a history of systematic racism. In the end, says Stepancic, she was so frustrated by the lack of black donors and the industry’s lacklustre attempts to combat it that she set up her own cryobank for Black, Brown and Indigenous people. She realised, she says, that ‘we need to do this for ourselves’. More

Donald Trump appealed to the US supreme court on Wednesday to undo the Colorado ruling that removed him from the ballot in the western state under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, for inciting an insurrection.“In our system of ‘government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people,’ Colorado’s ruling is not and cannot be correct,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in their Wednesday filing. They also said the Colorado supreme court’s ruling “if allowed to stand, will mark the first time in the history of the United States that the judiciary has prevented voters from casting ballots for the leading major-party presidential candidate”.They went on to lay out several reasons why the supreme court should restore him to the ballot. Only Congress, not the courts, had the authority to evaluate a dispute over the eligibility of a presidential candidate, they wrote. As president, his lawyers argued, Trump was not an “officer” of the United States – relevant language in the constitution bars anyone from serving if they have “engaged in insurrection” as an officer of the United States.They also argued that Trump’s conduct did not amount to an insurrection and argued that the Colorado supreme court’s decision ran afoul of a provision of the constitution that empowers state legislatures to decide how to appoint presidential electors.Trump’s appeal came after both the Colorado Republican party and the challengers who brought the case both asked the justices to take the case. They are widely expected to do so.A ruling either pausing or allowing the Colorado supreme court’s decision to stand could come fairly quickly, though the exact timeline is unclear. Colorado must begin mailing ballots to overseas voters for its 5 March primary on 20 January. Clerks must start mailing ballots to all other voters between 12 and 16 February.Jena Griswold, Colorado’s secretary of state, asked the court this week to resolve the issue “as expeditiously as possible in light of the upcoming election calendar”. The Colorado supreme court’s ruling said in its ruling last month that the decision was paused while an appeal in the US supreme court was ongoing.Promising to appeal “swiftly”, a spokesperson for Trump, Steven Cheung, said the former president turned clear Republican presidential frontrunner had “full confidence that the US supreme court will quickly rule in our favour”.After the Colorado ruling, Trump was also removed from the ballot in Maine, by its secretary of state, who also suspended the ruling pending appeals. Trump appealed that ban in state court on Tuesday.Separately, Trump faces 91 criminal charges, 17 for election subversion. In the federal election subversion case, the US supreme court is also due to consider Trump’s claim that he enjoys immunity from prosecution for any acts in office.The supreme court is dominated 6-3 by conservatives, in large part thanks to three appointments made when Trump was in office.The 14th amendment was adopted in 1868, soon after the civil war. Section three provided for barring from federal and state office anyone who fought for the Confederacy in that conflict.Notably, the provision has rarely been used. Many legal observers expect Trump to prevail in the Colorado case, one of numerous such challenges, others having failed in state courts.The supreme court does not have to take the Colorado case but in all likelihood will. Its handling of the case will be closely watched, not least by progressives angered by the court’s rightward shift and contentious rulings, including the removal of the federal right to abortion.In the aftermath of the Colorado ruling, Ty Cobb, once a White House lawyer for Trump, told CNN: “I think this case will be handled quickly. I think it could be 9-0 in the supreme court for Trump … because I think the law is clear.”According to Cobb – and other former Trump lawyers – the law is clear that the presidency and vice-presidency are not covered by section three, specifically its definition of a government office, because those positions are not mentioned.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn full, section three reads: “No person shall be a senator or representative in Congress, or elector of president and vice-president, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”Last week, ABC News examined records of debate over the 14th amendment. In one exchange, Reverdy Johnson, a Maryland senator, asked why the text of section three did not mention the presidency or vice-presidency.Lot Morrill, from Maine, said: “Let me call the senator’s attention to the words ‘or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States.’”That, Steven Portnoy of ABC wrote, “end[ed] the discussion on that point”.J Michael Luttig, a conservative former judge who testified in front of the House January 6 committee, has repeatedly stressed that in his view, Trump should be removed from the ballot.Speaking to MSNBC in December, Luttig saluted a “historic [and] unassailable decision that the former president is disqualified from the presidency because he conducted, engaged in or aided or supported an insurrection or rebellion against the United States constitution”.Trump and other Republican presidential contenders have said barring Trump under the 14th amendment would be anti-democratic, and that only voters should choose who is fit for office. So have prominent Democrats.Luttig said: “What I would say to all Americans is that the constitution itself has determined that the disqualification of the former president is not what is anti-democratic.“Rather, the constitution tells us that it is the conduct that can give rise to disqualification under the 14th amendment that is anti-democratic.” More

Donald Trump secured the endorsement of Tom Emmer on Wednesday, completing a full House of Republican leaders backing the former US president even though Trump dynamited the majority whip’s own bid for speaker just two months ago.“Democrats have made clear they will use every tool in their arsenal to try and keep Joe Biden and his failed policies in power,” Emmer said.“We cannot let them. It’s time for Republicans to unite behind our party’s clear frontrunner, which is why I am proud to endorse Donald J Trump for president.”Despite facing 91 criminal charges, assorted civil threats and removal from the ballot in Colorado and Maine over his incitement of the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, Trump leads presidential rivals including the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley by vast polling margins.In general election polling, he is competitive or enjoys leads over Biden.Emmer, from Minnesota, followed the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, and majority leader, Steve Scalise (both from Louisiana) and Elise Stefanik of New York, the conference chair, in endorsing the man who sent supporters to the Capitol to try to stop certification of Biden’s 2020 win.Even after rioters attacked the House chamber, 139 House Republicans and eight senators objected to results in key states. But Emmer was not among them and last October, after the far right ejected Kevin McCarthy as speaker, the Minnesotan followed Scalise and Jim Jordan of Ohio in failing to secure the role.At the time, Trump said Emmer had called him and was his “biggest fan now” but also deemed him “totally out of touch with Republican voters”, lobbied Republicans to reject him and reportedly boasted: “He’s done. It’s over. I killed him.”Emmer’s endorsement of his tormentor was therefore widely noted.Rick Wilson, a former Republican operative turned co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said: “Remember when you were on those anti-Trump calls in 2016, Tom?”Tim Miller, another former Republican strategist turned Trump critic, chose to be more blunt: “Was Tom Emmer – who was viciously savaged by Trump and his allies during the failed speaker attempt – wearing a ball gag or a gimp mask when he sent this statement? Need some behind-scenes colour.”Miller’s invective was matched by Trump’s campaign team, which said of Erin Perrine, a former Trump aide now working for DeSantis, “nothing can ever wash that foul stench of shit off her”. But regardless of such Republican infighting, endorsements for Trump kept coming in.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe three other House Republicans from Minnesota – Brad Finstad, Michelle Fischbach and Pete Stauber – joined Emmer in backing Trump.From the Senate, the Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, once seen as a possible Republican candidate, also gave Trump his backing.“When Donald Trump was president,” Cotton said, “America was safe, strong and prosperous.”He did not mention his own, infamous claim that regular troops needed to be used to quash protests for racial justice in 2020, when Trump was in the White House.Overlooking the economic devastation wrought that same year by Covid-19, Cotton continued: “The economy was booming, working-class wages were growing, our border was secure, and our enemies feared us.”“I endorse President Trump and I look forward to working with him to win back the White House and the Senate … it’s time to get our country back on track.” More