Evelyn Reynolds

Kevin McCarthy will return from his August recess on Tuesday facing the latest in a long series of conundrums for the Republican House leader: should he force a government shutdown, leaving hundreds of thousands of government workers without a paycheck, or burn more bridges with the hard-right flank of his conference, risking his speakership in the process?With just 12 legislative days left before the end of the fiscal year, the Republican-controlled House must quickly pass some kind of spending package to keep the federal government open after 30 September. If the chamber does not approve a spending bill, the government will shut down for the first time in nearly five years, furloughing federal employees and stalling many crucial programs.McCarthy has indicated his preference to pass a continuing resolution, which would keep the government funded at its current levels for a short period of time as lawmakers continue to negotiate over a longer-term deal. But members of the hard-right House freedom caucus, who are still furious over the deal that McCarthy and President Joe Biden struck to suspend the debt ceiling earlier this year, insist they will not back a continuing resolution unless the speaker agrees to several significant policy concessions, such as increased border security and an impeachment inquiry into Biden.Given House Republicans’ narrow majority and a new rule allowing any single member of the chamber to force a vote on removing the speaker, McCarthy’s handling of this fraught situation could determine whether he loses his gavel after just eight months in power.The trouble for McCarthy started in the spring, after the House passed the compromise debt ceiling bill, known as the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Seventy-one members of the House Republican conference opposed the legislation over concerns that it did not go far enough to reduce government spending, and they sharply criticized McCarthy for agreeing to the inadequate deal.Gordon Gray, vice-president for economic policy at the center-right thinktank American Action Forum, said he had been bracing for a potential shutdown ever since the debt ceiling showdown concluded.“Since the debt limit grenade was diffused, there’s a big chunk of House Republicans who just want to break something,” Gray said. “That’s just how some of these folks define governing. It’s how their constituents define success.”Now House Republicans have reneged on the debt ceiling deal, instead choosing to advance appropriations bills with spending levels below those agreed to in the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Democrats warn that the proposed cuts could deal a devastating financial blow to early education programs, climate initiatives and housing assistance.“The deal in the Fiscal Responsibility Act was roughly a freeze. It could be worse, but a freeze effectively is a cut in purchasing power because costs go up every year,” said David Reich, senior fellow at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “So what was agreed to was a reasonably tight level, and now come the House Republicans marking up their bills.”House Republicans’ strategy in the spending talks has been met with exasperation in the Senate, which returned from its recess on Tuesday. Before the upper chamber adjourned at the end of July, the Senate appropriations committee advanced all 12 spending bills for fiscal year 2024 with bipartisan support. The Democratic Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has implored the House to take a similar approach to the budget process.“Both parties, in both chambers, will have to work together if we are to avoid a shutdown,” Schumer said on Wednesday in a floor speech. “When the House returns next week, I implore – I implore – my Republican colleagues in the House to recognize that time is short to keep the government open, and the only way to avoid a shutdown is through bipartisanship.”Even the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, offered a mild rebuke of his colleagues in the House when asked about the spending fight last week.“Speaker McCarthy agreed to certain spending levels in the debt limit deal he reached with President Biden earlier this year,” McConnell said. “The House then turned around and passed spending levels that were below that level. Without saying an opinion about that, that’s not going to be replicated in the Senate.”McConnell indicated that the most likely outcome at this point would be the approval of a short-term continuing resolution to buy more time in the budget talks. But members of the House freedom caucus, who abhor the idea of extending funding at levels previously approved by a Democratic Congress, have already outlined a litany of demands in exchange for their support on a continuing resolution.In a statement released late last month, the caucus said its members would only back a continuing resolution if it included a Republican proposal on border security and addressed “the unprecedented weaponization of the justice department and FBI”, an implicit reference to the four criminal cases against Donald Trump. The caucus also demanded an end to the so-called “woke” policies at the department of defense, which has faced rightwing criticism for providing funding to servicemembers and their family members who need to travel to access abortion care.Hard-right Republicans have now added another item to their list of demands: the launch of an impeachment inquiry against Biden.“I’ve already decided I will not vote to fund the government unless we have passed an impeachment inquiry on Joe Biden,” Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican congresswoman from Georgia, said last week.Another hard-right House member, Matt Gaetz of Florida, has warned that McCarthy’s failure to act on impeaching Biden could cost him his speakership.“I worked very hard in January to develop a toolkit for House Republicans to use in a productive and positive way. I don’t believe we’ve used those tools as effectively as we should have,” Gaetz said on Tuesday. “We’ve got to seize the initiative. That means forcing votes on impeachment. And if Speaker McCarthy stands in our way, he may not have the job long.”But the possibility of an impeachment inquiry has failed to gain widespread favor among Senate Republicans, several of whom have acknowledged that Greene and her allies have presented no valid evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors on Biden’s part.With the likelihood of a shutdown increasing by the day, the White House has attacked hard-right Republicans’ demands as a political stunt that could reap devastating consequences for millions of Americans.“Lives are at stake across a wide range of urgent, bipartisan priorities for the American people,” Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson, said on Thursday. “Like Senate Republicans, Speaker McCarthy should keep his word about government funding. And he should do so in a way that acts on these pressing issues – including fentanyl, national security and disaster response – rather than break his promise and cave to the most extreme members of his conference agitating for a baseless impeachment stunt and shutdown.”Past shutdowns prove the widespread upheaval caused by lapses in government funding. During the last partial shutdown, which ended in January 2019, roughly 800,000 federal workers went without a paycheck. The Trump administration tried to keep national parks open with limited staff, resulting in damage to the grounds. Loan programs overseen by the Small Business Administration and federally funded research projects were also halted or delayed.“It’s very disruptive. Federal agencies spend a whole lot of time trying to figure out what they’re allowed to do and not allowed to do,” Reich said. “It’s a total waste of effort and energy.”Even though history shows the fallout of government shutdowns, Gray still anticipates a lapse in funding – if not in October then later this year.“I could envision a brief [continuing resolution] – like two weeks – with some disaster supplemental funding in it,” Gray said. “My expectation is that we’ll still have a shutdown this fall.” More

Ron DeSantis is “fundamentally authoritarian”, but Donald Trump’s quest for “vengeance” poses an even greater threat to democracy, California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom said on Sunday.Newsom took aim at the leading two candidates for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination during a hard-hitting and wide-ranging interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, the final episode with its long-time host Chuck Todd.“I worry about democracy,” he said. “I worry about the fetishness for autocracy that we’re seeing not just from Trump, but around the world, and notably across this country.“I’ve made the point about DeSantis that I think he’s functionally authoritarian. I’m worried more, in many respects, about Trumpism, which transcends well beyond his term and time in tenure.”Newsom added: “The vengeance in Donald Trump’s heart right now is more of a threat.”The governor, seen as a rising star in the Democratic party and a likely future presidential candidate, was referring to the former president’s often-voiced promises to gain “revenge” – if he wins back the White House – over political rivals he blames for the multiple criminal indictments against him.If Trump does win the 2024 general election, Newsom said, he would work with his administration for the sake of California residents, as he said he did during the Covid-19 pandemic.“At the end of the day, these are the cards that are dealt. And I want to do the best for the people that I represent, 40 million Americans that happen to live in California,” he told Todd, who is standing down as host of Meet the Press after almost a decade.“Many support him. I’m not going to oppose someone just to oppose them – I don’t come into a relationship with closed fists, but an open hand. I call balls and strikes, and few people were more aggressive at calling balls and strikes against Donald Trump. I called California the most un-Trump state in America, and I hold to that.”Newsom saved his harshest criticism, however, for DeSantis, the rightwing Republican governor of Florida, with whom he has frequently clashed. He disagreed with DeSantis’s strategy of lifting lockdowns and banning mask mandates, and attacked the Florida leader’s “partisanship” – most recently on display when he snubbed Joe Biden’s visit to the state in the aftermath of Hurricane Idalia.“I don’t like the partisanship. And I thought it was demonstrably displayed by what I thought was a very weak exercise by governor DeSantis,” Newsom said regarding the Floridian’s snub of the president.Newsom and DeSantis have agreed to a televised debate on Fox TV this fall. An impasse over logistics might soon clear, Newsom said.The California governor said he was fine with the rightwing Fox personality Sean Hannity as moderator, making it effectively a “two-on-one” debate in Newsom’s words. But Newsom said he was still not happy with the proposed venue and sizable public audience.“They wanted thousands of people and [to] make it a performance. I wasn’t interested in that. We were pretty clear on that. [But] we’re getting closer,” he said.Other subjects covered during the interview included who might run as the Democratic party’s candidate in the 2024 presidential election if Biden – who will be 81 on polling day – drops out.Newsom said he doesn’t expect that to happen, but if it does, the candidate will not be him.“Won’t happen,” he replied when Todd asked him if he would ever run against the vice-president, Kamala Harris, a former California senator with whom he said he has “a very good relationship”.“It’s the Biden-Harris administration. Maybe I’m a little old-fashioned about presidents and vice-presidents. We need to move past this notion that he’s not going to run. President Biden is going to run, and [I’m] looking forward to getting him re-elected,” Newsom said.Newsom was also questioned on the future of the veteran California senator Dianne Feinstein, 90, whose recent health issues have led to long absences from the chamber and prompted calls for her to stand down.He refused to be drawn on whether he would appoint a replacement, as he did when elevating Alex Padilla, California’s secretary of state, to the senate when Harris became Biden’s running mate in 2020.“Her staff is still extraordinarily active and we wish her only the best,” he said, insisting that Feinstein could still represent the state until next year.“Her term expires – she’s not running for re-election. So this time next year we’ll be in a very different place. I don’t want to make another appointment, and I don’t think the people of California want me to make another appointment.“That said, [if] we have to do it, we’ll do it.” More

David Cox is trying to persuade his members that Joe Biden has done more for working-class Americans than any US president in his decades as a construction worker and union organiser in eastern Ohio.But Cox is not sure they really want to hear it in a state where the Democratic brand was in decline long before Donald Trump snatched victory in Ohio in 2016 and then increased his support four years later.“Biden’s been great. He’s done so much for labour like we haven’t never seen in my lifetime,” he said, ticking off legislation to revitalise manufacturing and invest in technology that created many new construction jobs, as well as labour department decisions in favour of workers.“But whether it brings back those we lost to Trump remains to be seen. I think even if they aren’t inclined to go out and vote for Biden, maybe they’ll just stay home and not vote at all. That’s half a win.”Cox, an ironworker and director of the Dayton Building and Construction Trades Council, a union umbrella group representing thousands of construction workers in eastern Ohio, has good reason for scepticism.Ohio was once a swing state so crucial that presidential candidates repeatedly piled in to win over voters. But by 2020, the Democratic national funders decided it wasn’t even worth throwing serious money into the fight and left Ohio off their list of targets, essentially conceding the state to Trump and the Republicans.The only Democrat to win statewide office in more than a decade is the US senator Sherrod Brown who is expected to face a tough fight for re-election next year.Cox’s union is based in Dayton, a part of Montgomery county where the Democratic vote was once strong enough to help offset losses elsewhere in the state. Trump won the county in 2016, albeit by a whisker. Biden took it back four years later by just 2%.Party officials, nationally and locally, appear to have recognised the mistake in letting Ohio slip away. But there is disagreement on the causes and how to respond even if they see reasons for optimism.Ohio Democrats have been energised by the size of the victory and turnout in last month’s referendum on a Republican attempt to make it more difficult to amend the state constitution. The move was aimed at making it harder for voters to enshrine access to abortion in the constitution in another ballot in November. But it was defeated by 57% to 43% on an exceptionally high turnout for a ballot vote in August, reflecting what Democrats see as a major electoral issue in their favor after the US supreme court struck down constitutional protections last year.For all that, veteran Democrats say there is a long road to travel in Ohio for a party that is the architect of some of its own misfortunes.On paper, Biden should be in a relatively strong position. The economy and job numbers are growing even if inflation has hit hard. But a CNN national survey released on Thursday found Biden neck and neck with Trump and every other Republican candidate with the exception of the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who was six points ahead of the president.There are good reasons to be cautious about those numbers more than a year before the election, but they are another reminder to the Democrats of the difficulties of persuading voters in regions like eastern Ohio that Biden has been good for them. The economy may look stronger on paper but even if voters are not struggling financially many do not feel good about their deeply fractured country or the Democrats.Kim McCarthy, the Democratic chair in Greene county which includes part of eastern Dayton, said her party struggles to shake the perception that, at a national level, it is not interested in working people.“It’s not a secret that our country is run by corporate USA Inc. I feel that limitation stops Democrats from fighting for things that would bring people over to their side, like universal healthcare,” she said.McCarthy said that remained a good part of the reason for Trump’s continuing support in her county.“The appeal of Trump ultimately is that people recognise that our federal government is failing us as a society, as a nation. I’m from Australia and I think one of the most profound things that I’ve realised over my 25-odd years of living here is that the US government doesn’t care about me and my life,” she said.“When I moved here, I gave up a government that was prepared to support me to ensure that I had the tools to live my best life. I think Americans, even without having lived in another country, ultimately understand that difference. Trump, of course, is not the answer to that problem.”Cox said the Democratic party nationally and locally bears a good deal of the responsibility for losing Ohio. “Labour feels it has been left out of the picture,” he said.He added that the Democrats had been damaged goods in Dayton since Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) and thousands of factory jobs were shipped to Mexico after 1994.“This was a General Motors town and every family had somebody that worked there. When Nafta happened, General Motors virtually pulled out of this town and moved to Mexico. In the Dayton area, it’s a sore issue even today. People were selling homes, selling their boats, selling their motorcycles,” he said.The legacy is visible in abandoned industrial buildings and open spaces where factories once stood. Dayton has lost one-quarter of its population since Nafta.Cox said Nafta changed the perception of the Democrats as representing American workers. Then Trump came along and renegotiated Nafta to improve some of the terms for the US which made it look as if he was at least listening to workers in cities like Dayton.“That was one of his better moves. People here liked that,” said Cox. “That and really punching China in the nose.”There’s no shortage of Democrats to admit they got it wrong in Ohio. But the chair of Montgomery county Democrats, Mohamed Al-Hamdani, sees the mistakes differently.Al-Hamdani, the first Muslim to chair a Democratic party branch in Ohio, said that the problem went beyond overlooking industrial workers.“We’ve become a polarised country and I think some of that is because demographics are changing in the United States. In 1992, when my family came here, I don’t think there was a Muslim in Congress. People of color had a few seats in Congress, women had smaller number of seats in Congress and the Senate. And you couldn’t even say LGBTQ+,” he said.“Fast-forward 35 years and the country has rapidly changed and some of that change comes at a cost for a party like us. When you’re that party that supports all that, sometimes there is a backlash. We’re on the right side of history, for sure. But doing the right thing doesn’t always get you elected.”That divide can be seen in differing views of why the former Ohio congressman Tim Ryan lost the US Senate race last year to the Republican JD Vance, the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy – a controversial account of growing up amid poverty and drug addiction.At times Ryan appeared to be running against his own party.“You’ve seen a broken economic system where both parties have sold out to the corporate interests that shift our jobs down to the southern part of this country, then to Mexico, then to China. There is no economic freedom if there’s no jobs here in the United States,” he told a 2022 election rally.Cox, who calls Ryan “the worker’s Democrat”, thinks he lost because the national Democratic party failed to fund his campaign properly. Ryan has accused the party of writing off states like Ohio that do not have a majority of voters with a university degree.Al-Hamdani thinks Ryan was so concentrated on winning back support from those who decamped to Trump, such as some of Cox’s members, that he neglected the voters who stuck with the Democrats.“Our base is still a diverse base. In Montgomery county a majority of votes that come to Democrats still come from very diverse areas, black neighborhoods,” he said.“Ryan’s team made the calculation that they thought those folks were already in the bag and that just wasn’t true. You have to work to shore up your base, and our base just didn’t show up. They didn’t vote in the numbers we wanted them to. I think a lot of it’s because they felt, and rightfully so, that they were forgotten and taken for granted, and we can’t do that as a party.”Then there are the rural voters. While Ohio’s three largest cities – Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati – remain solidly Democrat, it’s not enough to offset the huge shift away from the party outside urban areas.Fred Strahorn, a Black member of the Ohio legislature for a Dayton district for nearly 20 years who also led the Democratic caucus for four years, said the party had not been helped by east coast liberals dismissing Trump voters as motivated by nothing more than prejudice.“I think some of those voters took that as an insult, and it made them even more entrenched in their decision. I don’t think that’s how you court voters. I don’t think that you can just say, hey, because you didn’t agree with me, there’s something wrong with you,” he said.Strahorn said that if Biden was to have any chance of winning the state he needed to return to Obama’s strategy of spending a lot of time on the ground telling people what he is going to do for them. But he said the Democrats also need to engage voters on their “litmus issues” such as guns and support for the military to explain that the party is not hostile to either.“We need to say that we do support the military. The truth is the opposition supports military contracting, not necessarily military personnel, because they often try to take stuff from the military personnel and their families. They support things that go boom. There’s ways to talk about this but you have to engage them,” he said.Strahorn said there would be no quick comeback for the party in Ohio and that ultimately winning voters’ confidence was a long game. He wants the Democrats to have the courage to embrace what he regards as one of the party’s greatest strengths, defence of government as a means to improve people’s lives.He said the party had become afraid of doing it in the face of relentless Republican attacks blaming people’s problems on “big government”, a strategy reinforced by Democrats in Congress who serve the interests of corporations.“One of the failures, multi decades long, is not telling people what government does for them and remind them on a regular basis, so they’re not so easily turned against it. We’ve not defended government, not really explained all the things that government does that you actually like, want and use,” he said.“Therefore when somebody comes along and takes a swack at it, it’s easy for people to believe because they never hear anything but that. If you don’t counter that it really makes it hard for that electorate to see you as somebody who’s trying to help them because you haven’t explained how that works. That’s your battleground.” More

By the polling, Joe Biden is stuck in a footrace with Donald Trump, his 91-times criminally charged predecessor as president. More than three-quarters of voters say Biden is too old to govern effectively. Two-thirds of Democrats wish he would throw in the towel.The intersection of Biden’s work as vice-president to Barack Obama and what Franklin Foer calls the “dodgy business dealings of son Hunter” haunts the father still. More than three fifths of Americans now believe Joe Biden was involved in Hunter’s business. The impeachment specter hovers.Kamala Harris poses a further problem. The polls, again: 53% of independents disapprove of the vice-president, two in five strongly. Were Biden to leave the stage, few would be reassured.Under the subtitle “Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future”, Foer dives into our political morass. He emerges with a well-sourced look at Biden and his time in power. A staff writer at the Atlantic and former editor of the New Republic, Foer acknowledges his own doubts about Biden but also voices his admiration for the back-slapping politician from Scranton. Foer’s title, The Last Politician, points to his thesis: that Biden’s old-fashioned approach to politics drives and shapes all he does.Foer captures Biden’s successes and his cock-ups, his abilities and insecurities. At times, Biden is portrayed as overly confident. He is also caught wondering why John F Kennedy was not so tightly handled by his aides – or “babied”, as Foer reports it. Youth, vigor and acuity are all parts of the answer.The Last Politician is definitely news-laden, a must-read for political junkies. Biden’s staff finally spoke. Foer lays out how Biden’s age shapes his first term and his re-election odds; Harris’s shortcomings as vice-president; and Biden’s relationships with Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine and Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. Complications dominate.Biden’s “advanced years were a hindrance, depriving him of the energy to cast a robust public presence or the ability to easily conjure a name”, Foer writes. “His public persona reflected physical decline and time’s dulling of mental faculties that no pill or exercise regime can resist.”Biden was gaffe-prone as a younger politician. Now, his verbal and physical stumbles lead news cycles.Decades ago, Ronald Reagan’s typical day began with his arrival in the West Wing at 9am. Biden starts about an hour later. That’s an hour earlier than Trump, sure. But Foer writes: “It was striking that [Biden] took so few morning meetings or presided over so few public events before 10am.” Plenty has been written about Reagan’s capacity by the end of his term. When Reagan left the White House, after eight years, he was nearly 78. Today, Biden is nearly 81.“In private,” Foer writes, Biden “would occasionally admit that he felt tired.” Unstated is this: the cumulative effect of such realities of age leaves Biden on the cusp of being ignored, unable to woo swaths of the American public or drive his message and numbers. In the 2022 midterms, his popularity deficit kept him sidelined. For a politician, a shrug or a yawn can be more damning than disdain.Expect Republicans to quote Foer as they bash Harris. “Rabbit Ears” is the chapter title of Foer’s examination of the former California senator, a moniker bestowed by Biden’s inner circle. As they saw it, Foer writes, Harris was sensitive to “any hint of criticism … instantly aware” of the slightest dissatisfaction.She projected clinginess and uncertainty. “Instead of carving out an independent role, she stuck to the president’s side – an omnipresence at every Oval Office meeting.” Harris’s “piercing questions” impressed Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, but lunches with Biden gradually fell “off the schedule”.Then again, Biden owed Harris little. She brutalized him in a debate, intimating he was a bigot. Then she dropped out of the Democratic primary before a vote was cast, the political equivalent of a face-plant.The relationship between Biden and Zelenskiy also had its ups-and-downs, Foer says. He lauds Biden for “quietly arming the Ukrainians”, helping them “fend off invasion” by Russia. He also describes tensions between the two leaders.Biden and Zelenskiy failed to establish swift rapport. Zelenskiy demanded Nato membership and offered “absurd analysis” of alliance dynamics, leaving Biden “pissed off”. In Foer’s telling, “even Zelenskiy’s most ardent sympathizers in the [Biden] administration agreed that he had bombed”, while Zelenskiy “at least subconsciously … seemed to blame” Biden “for the humiliation he suffered, for the political awkwardness he endured” at the hands of Trump.“Where Biden tended to expect Zelenskiy to open with expressions of gratitude for American support, Zelenskiy crammed his conversations with a long list of demands.” Sucking up to Ted Cruz didn’t help either.In the end, Foer is a Biden fan. He gives the Inflation Reduction Act, in his view the crowning achievement of the first term, an unqualified endorsement. Homing in on provisions that aim to “stall climate change”, Foer says the law stands as “an investment in moral authority”, enabling the US to “prod” other countries on environmental issues.Watching the latest spate of environmental cataclysms, it is hard to dispute that the climate crisis is real – all while Republican presidential aspirants continue their denials. But there is something amiss in Foer’s enthusiasm and the administration’s posture. For now, inflation holds more public attention. Nearly three-quarters of Americans see inflation as a “very important” issue. Climate crisis and the environment? Forty-four per cent.A hunch: voters are less worried about moral authority and more about grocery bills and prices at the pump. According to the polls, the Democrats have lost their grip on voters without a four-year college degree, regardless of race. A priorities gap is on display again.Issues that speak loudest to white progressives lack broad resonance. The faculty lounge makes a lousy focus group. Foer’s enthusiasm is premature.
The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future is published in the US by Penguin More

The son of a prominent conservative activist has been convicted of charges that he stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, bashed in a window, chased a police officer, invaded the Senate floor and helped a mob disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory.Leo Brent Bozell IV, 44, of Palmyra, Pennsylvania, was found guilty on Friday of 10 charges, including five felony offenses, after a trial decided by a federal judge, according to the federal justice department.Bozell’s father is Brent Bozell III, who founded the Media Research Center, Parents Television Council and other conservative media organizations.The US district judge John Bates heard testimony without a jury before convicting Bozell of charges including obstructing the January 6 joint session of Congress convened to certify the electoral college vote that Biden won over then president Donald Trump, a Republican.Bozell was “a major contributor to the chaos, the destruction and the obstruction at the Capitol on 6 January 2021”, prosecutors said in a pretrial court filing.The judge is scheduled to sentence Bozell on 9 January.Bozell’s lawyer, William Shipley Jr, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Saturday.Prosecutors said that before the riot, Bozell helped plan and coordinate events in Washington in support of Trump’s “Stop the Steal” movement. They said that after Trump’s rally near the White House on 6 January, Bozell marched to the Capitol and joined a mob in breaking through a police line. He smashed a window next to the Senate wing door, creating an entry point for hundreds of rioters, according to prosecutors.After climbing through the smashed window, Bozell joined other rioters in chasing a Capitol police officer, Eugene Goodman, up a staircase to an area where other officers confronted the group.Later, Bozell was captured on video entering the office of the then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat. He appeared to have something in his hand when he left, prosecutors said.Entering the Senate gallery, Bozell moved a C-Span camera to face the ground so it could not record rioters ransacking the chamber on a live video feed. He also spent several minutes on the Senate floor.Bozell roamed thorough the Capitol for nearly an hour, reaching more than a dozen different parts of the building and passing through at least seven police lines before officers escorted him out, prosecutors said.In a pretrial court filing, Bozell’s lawyer denied that Bozell helped overwhelm a police line or engaged in any violence against police.“In fact, video evidence will show that Mr Bozell assisted in some small way law enforcement officers that he thought could be helped by his assistance,” Shipley wrote.Shipley also argued that Bozell “was – for the most part – simply lost and wandering from place-to-place observing events as they transpired”.Bozell was arrested in February 2021. An FBI tipster who identified Bozell recognized him in part from the “Hershey Christian Academy” sweatshirt that he wore on January 6.More than 1,100 people have been charged with Capitol attack-related federal crimes. More than 650 of them have pleaded guilty. Approximately 140 others have been convicted by judges or juries after trials in Washington. More

Donald Trump was “really, really upset” when he learned that his former White House adviser Peter Navarro had been convicted of contempt of Congress, according to the ex-president’s close ally Rudy Giuliani.“This one really got to me,” Giuliani – the former New York City mayor and Trump attorney – said Friday on the far-right media outlet Newsmax. “I was with former president Trump when we found out about it [on Thursday], and I’ve got to tell you, he was really, really upset about it.”Giuliani told the Newsmax host Eric Bolling that pending criminal charges against him and Trump were “one thing” – but it was different to see “your family, your friends, the people working for you” to get in similar trouble.“I mean, this is absurd,” Giuliani said.Navarro served as a senior trade adviser during Trump’s presidency. Congress subpoenaed him in February 2022 to face questioning about why Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, temporarily delaying certification of Joe Biden’s victory during the previous year’s presidential election.A House committee investigating the attack suspected Navarro had more information about any connection between claims of voter fraud that Trump allies had pushed and the assault on the Capitol. But Navarro did not surrender any emails, reports or notes, and he refused to testify.On Thursday, he was found guilty of two misdemeanor counts of contempt of Congress, both punishable by up to a year behind bars. Navarro’s sentencing has tentatively been scheduled for 12 January.Giuliani alluded in passing to “executive privilege” on Friday when discussing Navarro’s conviction on Newsmax, which is generally a friendly environment for Trump and his allies.Among other remarks, he also acknowledged that Navarro’s conviction had him worried as he grappled with charges filed against him by Georgia prosecutors who accuse him of trying to help Trump illegally overturn Biden’s electoral victory in that state in 2020.“Am I concerned? Of course I am,” Giuliani said to Bolling when asked about the criminal case being pursued by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis.Giuliani and Trump have pleaded not guilty to the charges brought against them by Willis. The pair were among 19 people named in a sprawling, 41-count indictment accusing them of conspiring to thwart the will of Georgia’s voters who had selected the Democratic victor Biden over his Republican rival Trump.At his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump on Thursday night hosted a $100,000-a-plate fundraiser meant to help Giuliani pay his legal bills, the Associated Press reported.Willis’s case against Giuliani, Trump and their co-defendants isn’t the only reason the ex-New York City mayor’s legal bills are piling up. A federal judge held him liable in August in a lawsuit brought by two Georgia election workers who say they were falsely accused of fraud.Giuliani could ultimately be compelled to pay significant damages to the election workers, in addition to the tens of thousands in court and lawyers’ fees for which he’s already on the hook, according to the AP.The charges in Georgia against Trump are contained in one of four criminal indictments filed against him this year. The others charge him for his retention of classified documents after leaving the White House, hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels and other efforts to forcibly nullify his defeat to Biden.Trump has denied all wrongdoing and maintains significant leads in national and key state polling of candidates seeking the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. More

As she addressed about 120 Democratic voters at a rally in rural Orange, Virginia, Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger made a point to impress upon her constituents just how much is on the line this fall.“This is personal. And politics is personal,” Spanberger told the crowd. “This year more than any other year, this election matters.”Stepping up to the podium, one of the Democrats endorsed by Spanberger, the state senate candidate Jason Ford, warned that Republican victories in November could have devastating consequences across the state.“In Virginia, reproductive rights are on the ballot this fall,” Ford said. “Properly funding our schools [is] on the ballot this fall.”The messages encapsulated Virginia Democrats’ broader pitch to voters as they look to regain control of the house of delegates and maintain their narrow majority in the state senate. They fear that, if Republicans can take full control of the general assembly, they will rubber-stamp Governor Glenn Youngkin’s conservative agenda to lower taxes and bolster “parents’ rights”. But most importantly, Democrats expect Republican victories in November would jeopardize abortion access in Virginia, which has become a rare refuge for those seeking the procedure in thesouth.The results also may provide the clearest indication yet of voters’ sentiments ahead of the 2024 elections and determine whether Virginia can still be considered a battleground, considering Republicans have lost the state in every presidential race since 2008.“Too many people think Virginia is solid blue in the electoral college,” said Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. “With Glenn Youngkin’s victory, and if the Republicans achieve what they are setting out to do this year, I think all bets are off for 2024.”An off-off-yearVirginia is one of just five US states that conduct off-year elections, meaning those that are held when no federal elections take place. History shows turnout in Virginia’s state legislative races tends to be particularly low in so-called “off-off-years” when there are no major statewide offices such as governor on the ballot.But candidates and activists from both sides of the aisle insist it would be a mistake to downplay the importance of Virginia’s elections this year. If Republicans can flip just two seats in the state senate, Youngkin will face few impediments in enacting his legislative agenda.Since taking office last year, Youngkin has already advanced policies calling for transgender children to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their sex assigned at birth. On his first day in office, Youngkin signed executive orders aimed at barring schools from teaching critical race theory and loosening public health mandates related to the coronavirus pandemic.“To get in and have the opportunity to take back the state senate and be able to support those initiatives is something that’s really important,” said Steve Knotts, chair of the Fairfax county Republican party in northern Virginia. “I think that they’ll be voting for Governor Youngkin’s initiatives and Republican control of the state legislature this year, but we have to do the work to get that message out because a lot of people forget there’s an election.”All 100 seats in the house of delegates, where Republicans held a 52-48 majority during the most recent legislative session, will be up for grabs. Democrats will be defending a 22-18 advantage in the state senate, where every seat will also be in play this November. The implementation of a new legislative map, which fueled a wave of retirements among veteran Virginia legislators, has injected more uncertainty into the elections.As of now, control of the legislature appears to be a true toss-up. According to a survey conducted by Virginia Commonwealth University in July, 47% of Virginians want Republicans in control of the house of delegates, compared with 41% who would prefer a Democratic majority. When asked about control of the state senate, Virginians were evenly divided, with 44% of respondents preferring a Democratic majority and another 44% supporting a Republican takeover.A fully red general assembly would be a gamechanger for Youngkin, who has faced a legislative blockade from Senate Democrats. A Republican takeover would erase the last major barrier in Youngkin’s quest to enact his full agenda – including a 15-week abortion ban.“This race is first and foremost about abortion,” said Susan Swecker, chair of the Democratic party of Virginia. “If it hadn’t been for the Democratic blue brick wall in the state senate the last two years, abortion would be banned in Virginia.”The last holdout in the southIn the wake of the supreme court’s decision last year to overturn Roe v Wade, southern states controlled by Republicans passed a wave of laws severely restricting access to abortion or, in some cases, banning it altogether. Virginia – where abortion is currently legal until about 26 weeks – has become the last remaining southern state without extensive abortion restrictions, but that status could soon evaporate if Republicans have their way.Youngkin has indicated he supports a 15-week abortion ban with exceptions for rape, incest and the safety of the mother. The governor has framed the proposal, which senate Democrats already defeated once earlier this year, as a point of consensus among a wide swath of Virginia voters.“I believe that there’s a moment for Virginians to come together over a very, very difficult topic, and Virginians elected a pro-life governor,” Youngkin said last month.But polls challenge the perception of a 15-week ban as an area of common ground across the state. According to a Washington Post-Schar School survey conducted in March, 49% of Virginia voters support a 15-week ban with exceptions, while 46% oppose it. Voters also expressed criticism of Youngkin’s stance on abortion, with 33% approving of his handling of the issue and 45% disapproving.Threats to abortion access appear to be weighing heavily on Virginians’ minds as they head for the polls. Sara Ratcliffe, a Democratic candidate for the house of delegates who spoke at the Orange rally, said abortion was often the first issue voters mention when she knocks on doors.“As the dominoes have fallen, especially in the redder states and in the states surrounding us here in the south, people have realized what’s at stake,” Ratcliffe said. “People are scared, and people are worried, which is why they’re turning out and they’re voting on this issue.”That fear and anger was palpable among the Democratic attendees of the Orange rally, several of whom cited protecting abortion access as their top priority for November.“People younger than me now don’t have the same freedoms I had when I was a woman of childbearing age, and I feel that’s not fair,” said Lynn Meyers, a 78-year-old from Locust Grove.Bill Maiden, a 58-year-old voter from Culpepper, added, “Even my friends that are Republican, they are concerned about [abortion access] too. They don’t agree with Youngkin’s stance on this.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionConcerns over abortion restrictions contributed to Republicans’ disappointing performance in the 2022 midterms, and the issue could now threaten the party’s hopes in Virginia.Despite the potential political liability of a 15-week ban, Democrats fear that Youngkin will not hesitate to approve an even more severe policy if Republicans flip the senate. They often remind voters that, shortly after Roe was overturned last year, Youngkin said, “Any bill that comes to my desk I will sign happily and gleefully in order to protect life.”Youngkin bets big on 2023Three years ago, most Virginians had never heard the name Glenn Youngkin. A former co-CEO of the private equity firm the Carlyle Group, Youngkin’s 2021 gubernatorial bid marked his first foray into electoral politics.He defeated six primary opponents by carefully toeing the line between endorsing many of Donald Trump’s policy positions on culture war issues without completely alienating the independent voters who eventually fueled his victory in the general election. Youngkin’s win over the former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe was all the more surprising given that it came just one year after Joe Biden beat Trump in Virginia by 10 points.“The guy never ran for office before, but he just had really good instincts [on] how to strike that balance and get the support of the [‘Make America Great Again’] Republicans while not seeming threatening at all to swing voters at the same time,” Rozell said. “Not many Republicans these days can do that.”Those instincts appear to have served Youngkin well in office so far. The VCU survey conducted in July showed Youngkin’s approval rating stood at +18, as 49% of Virginians approved of the governor’s job performance and 31% disapproved. Biden trailed far behind Youngkin at -15, with 39% of Virginians approving of his job performance and 54% disapproving.Those approval numbers have made Knotts more optimistic about Republicans’ prospects in November. “We have a very popular governor who is really getting in and doing some programs that are good for Democrats, Republicans [and] independents,” Knotts said. “So I think this could be a really good year for us.”Youngkin’s popularity has also spurred talk of a potential presidential bid, and the Fox News owner, Rupert Murdoch, has reportedly told allies that he would like to see the Virginia governor jump into the 2024 Republican primary.Youngkin’s success or failure in November could decide his fate on the national stage, and he has dedicated substantial political capital to bringing home a win for Republicans. Youngkin’s state Pac, Spirit of Virginia, raised an impressive $5.9m during the second quarter of the year to promote Republican campaigns.“This is a unifying agenda that is resonating across the Commonwealth,” said Dave Rexrode, chair of the Spirit of Virginia. “Virginians want leaders in the general assembly who will work with Governor Youngkin to move our commonwealth forward.”Beyond Youngkin’s own political future, the outcome in Virginia this November could provide a roadmap for both parties in 2024, as they battle it out for the White House.…When Barack Obama won Virginia in the 2008 presidential race, he became the first Democrat to carry the state since 1964, and the victory marked a sea change for his party. Democrats have won Virginia in every presidential election since Obama’s landmark victory, and the party now holds both of Virginia’s US Senate seats.Their wins have led some Democrats to downplay Virginia’s status as a battleground state, but Swecker warns that would be a dangerous oversight.“People got very excited about the successes we had and took for granted that we were a blue state,” Swecker said. “Those of us who are in the trenches know better.”Youngkin’s victory in 2021 demonstrated how Republicans can still play statewide in Virginia, and the governor hopes that the legislative races this year will prove his win was no fluke.“I am curious whether the Republicans are able to carry that momentum into this election cycle and what it might suggest about the Republican base and how deeply engaged it is and activated going into the 2024 elections,” Rozell said.Regardless of the outcome in Virginia, the November results will be closely scrutinized by both parties to spot potential strengths and vulnerabilities heading into 2024, when the White House and Congress will be up for grabs.As someone who has closely studied Virginia politics since the 1980s, Rozell has endured much talk about the state being a guarantee for one party or the other over the years, but he insists that Virginia remains, as ever, a battleground.“Don’t assume that Virginia is a Democratic lock any more,” Rozell said. “And those 13 electoral votes can be really important next year.” More

How did Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election despite the Access Hollywood tape? How did he gain even more votes in 2020 despite an administration of chaos, lies and pandemic blunders? How can he be running neck and neck with Joe Biden for 2024 despite four indictments and 91 criminal charges?Future historians will surely debate such questions and why so many Americans saw themselves in a tawdry tycoon and carnival barker. One of the most persuasive theories is captured in a single word: race.Trump won white voters without a college degree by 32 points in 2020. A glance at his rallies shows the lack of diversity in his notorious “base”. His signature slogan, “Make America great again”, is a thinly disguised appeal to nostalgia for postwar suburbia.In his books The End of White Christian America and White Too Long, Robert P Jones has steadily built the argument that this movement is animated by shifting demographics. He points out that in 2008, when Barack Obama, the first Black president, was elected, 54% of Americans identified as white and Christian. By the end of Obama’s second term, that share had fallen to 47%. Today it is 42%.“It’s just a continued slide,” says Jones, 55, sitting at his desk at the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), where he is founder and president, in downtown Washington. “Most importantly, moving from majority to decisively non-majority white and Christian has set off a kind of ‘freak out’ moment among many white Christians.”In The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future, effectively the third book in an unofficial trilogy, Jones traces the roots of Trumpism back more than 500 years.He explains: “Go back and understand they really do believe that this country was divinely ordained to be a promised land for European Christians.“That idea is so old and so deep it explains in many ways the visceral reactivity. Why are we fighting today about AP African American history? Arkansas’s banned it, Florida’s been fighting it, and it’s because it tells this alternative story about the country that’s not just settlers, pioneers – a naive mythology of innocence.”Jones examines that mythological origin story and its promised land. He spotlights the “Doctrine of Discovery”, a little-known or understood series of 15th-century papal edicts asserting that European civilisation and western Christianity are superior to all other cultures, races and religions. For Jones, it is “a kind of Rosetta Stone for understanding the deep structure of the European political and religious worldviews we have inherited in this country”.The initial edict, issued by Nicholas V in 1452, granted the Portuguese king Alfonso V the right to “invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens [Muslims] and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery”.Jones says: “Then there’s a series of these documents that get issued between 1452 and 1493, each of which build on this idea but essentially all say the same thing: that if the land is not occupied by Christian people – and that Christian identity is the thing that determines whether you have your own human rights or not – then the Christian kings and queens have the right to conquer those lands and take possession of everything that they can in the name of the state and the church.”This provided convenient theological justification for the first European powers that came into contact with Native Americans to seize lands and exploit resources. Spreading the gospel by the sword was married with huge economic incentives.From this perspective, the enslavement of Africans was not America’s original sin but a continuation of genocide and dispossession justified by papal doctrine. The New York Times’s 1619 Project was a long-overdue corrective to established narratives but it was not the final word.Jones reflects: “The 1619 Project was very important culturally in the US because it at least did move us out of this room with white people gathered around a table like you see on the postage stamp or the paintings of the beginning of the country and took us back to a different story: the story of enslaved people in the country.“But if we really want to understand our present we have to go back and tell the whole story and that’s European contact with Indigenous people before it is enslavement and the transatlantic slave trade. That all comes from the same source. It is this cultural idea that there is a kind of superiority to European culture that’s justified by Christianity that sets up, in the Doctrine of Discovery, this entire project.”Jones sees connections between the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in the Mississippi Delta in 1955 and the killing and expulsion of Choctaws forced to walk the Trail of Tears, starting in 1831; between the lynching of three Black circus workers in Duluth in 1920 and the mass execution of 38 Dakota men in Minnesota in 1862.When history is put in silos, he contends, such threads are missed. “You don’t get a society that tortures and kills a 14-year-old boy in Mississippi on the basis of whistling at a white woman without this sense of entitlement, of superiority and permissive violence stemming from the Doctrine of Discovery. That was the thing that pushed people into the Mississippi territory, forcibly removing Choctaw Creek Native Americans from their lands, killing many, forcibly removing the others.“If you don’t understand that history, you end up with this shocking, ‘Well, how could a society be this way that this would happen, and then they [Roy Bryant and JW Milam, the white men who killed Till] would get acquitted by their peers, who deliberated for only an hour after the trial?’ But when you understand this longer history, that becomes a little bit less of a mystery.”When Jones visited these sites of trauma, he found communities working across racial lines to seek the truth, build memorials and museums and commemorate their histories in ways unthinkable in the last century. The US is currently in a great “Age of Re-evaluation”, according to Scott Ellsworth, a scholar of the Tulsa race massacre.Jones comments: “For all of these what I thought was fairly remarkable is how recent these moves are in the US to try to tell a different story, a more inclusive story about what happened. In none of these cases do they predate 2000. It’s all in the last 20 years that any of these movements have happened.“If you had driven down through the Delta in Mississippi in 2000, you would not have come across any signs or anything. Even though the whole world knows the story of Emmett Till, you would not have known that it happened in Tallahatchie county, in the Delta. There was nothing there on the ground. A group of citizens about 20 years ago got together and said, ‘No, we should change this, and we should try to tell the truth about the story.’”Till’s casket is displayed at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture; his story was told in the 2022 film Till; and in July, Joe Biden signed a proclamation designating an Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley national monument in Illinois and Mississippi.The 46th president urged America to face its history with all its peaks and troughs, blessings and blemishes. He told an audience in the White House grounds: “We can’t just choose to learn what we want to know. We have to learn what we should know. We should know about our country. We should know everything: the good, the bad, the truth of who we are as a nation. That’s what great nations do, and we are a great nation.”Biden added, a little bleakly: “We got a hell of a long way to go.”Jones believes that Biden gets it. “He’s been fairly remarkable on these issues of racial justice. He, for example, has been one of the only presidents who has used the words ‘white supremacy’ consistently in addresses – and not just before Black audiences. If you look at Biden’s speeches and you search for ‘white supremacy’, he’s not just talking about that in Tulsa during the commemoration speech.“He’s using it, and understands it as one of the deep problems of American history that we currently have to wrestle with. He’s been very clear and seems very genuine about that being something that he’s leaving as part of his legacy. It’s also part of why he made the pronouncement about the Emmett Till national monument, so this becomes a permanent part of the story that we tell about ourselves.”Trump, however, has a polar opposite worldview that Jones says explains why history has become the new frontline in the culture wars. Just over a third of self-identified Democrats are white and Christian; about 70% of self-identified Republicans are. PRRI polling finds that two-thirds of Democrats say America’s culture and way of life has changed for the better since the 1950s; two-thirds of Republicans believe it has changed for the worse.Jones writes how white Christians can “sense the tectonic plates moving” in the demographics of their neighbourhoods, the food in their grocery store, the appearance of Spanish-language local radio and roadside billboards, and the class photos on the walls of their public schools.He says: “I’ve always thought that, in Trump’s Maga slogan, the most powerful word is not about America being great; it’s the ‘again’ part. It’s this nostalgia tinged with loss. What have we lost and who’s the ‘we’ that have lost something? If you just ask those questions, it’s pretty clear. It’s the formerly dominant white Christians who were culturally dominant, demographically dominant, politically dominant and are no longer.“It’s that sense of loss and grievance that Trump has been so homed in on and so astute at fuelling and setting himself up. You hear him say things like, ‘I am your voice’, ‘I alone can fix it’, ‘If you don’t elect somebody like me, we’re not going to have a country any more’. Those kinds of phrases tell you what he’s appealing to.“If we look at the insurrection at the Capitol, it’s so chilling the last frame that the January 6 House select committee showed in their video has two people – it looks like something out of Les Mis – up on a barricade and they’ve got two flags. One is a Trump flag and the other is a Christian flag that they’re flying on the barricades.”Jones has skin in the game. Growing up a Southern Baptist in Jackson, Mississippi, he went to church five times a week and earned a divinity degree. His family Bible, printed in 1815, has generations of births and deaths and marriages handwritten between the Old and New Testaments. Some online genealogical research revealed slave-owners among his ancestors.“My grandfather was a deacon at a church in Macon, Georgia, and one of his jobs on Sunday morning was to make sure no Black people entered the sanctuary. He was literally a bouncer on the outside of the church to keep non-white people out. That was an official role as a deacon in the church. It wasn’t like some wink, wink, nod, nod – that was his assignment for Sunday morning.“It’s been tough, but, on the other hand, one of the things you hear often with these anti- so-called critical race theory bills and with ‘woke’ is ‘not making white people uncomfortable’. But I would rather know the truth, even if it’s an uncomfortable truth, then be ignorant and comfortable.”He quotes James Baldwin, the transcendent and trenchant African American writer: “All that can save you now is your confrontation with your own history … which is not your past, but your present. Your history has led you to this moment, and you can only begin to change yourself by looking at what you are doing in the name of your history.”Jones comments: “There’s a kind of liberation, freedom and growth that can come from facing this history and moving somewhere better together. That’s the invitation, and the reason for doing the work isn’t at all just to feel bad or beat yourself up over what your family did or whatever.“If we really want to live up to this promise of being a truly pluralistic, multi-religious, multiracial democracy, it’s going to take us coming to terms with that history and putting into place something different than we’ve had in the past. There’s no way we can do that if we don’t even understand why we’re in the dilemmas we’re currently in.”Another of his favourite Baldwin quotations describes “white people as the slightly mad victims of their own brainwashing”.Jones continues: “Such a great line, and if you think about this impossibly innocent history that we have told ourselves, that we were always upstanding, that we always treated other peoples with dignity and respect, it just isn’t true. In order, again, to right the ship and come to a new place together, we have to have to come to grips with that history.”Only then, Jones says, can America, a nation that likes to claim exceptionalism, be sincere about its unique experiment.“Our current generation is the first that has been asked whether we truly believe what we often claim: that we are a pluralistic democracy.“Before, many white Christian Americans who are part of the dominant culture could pay lip service to that, knowing that they had enough numbers at the ballot box, knowing that they had enough control on business, enough control of local institutions, that they still had a lock on power. This is the first generation where that’s not true.“The question is called in a way that’s new and that’s why there’s so much visceral reaction, because there’s a way in which we’ve never honestly had to answer the question. But now it’s being put in a way that we’re going to have to answer it.”
The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: And the Path to a Shared American Future is published in the US by Simon & Schuster More