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    US Senate passes stopgap bill to avert government shutdown

    The Senate voted on Thursday to extend current federal spending and keep the government open, sending a short-term measure to the House that would avoid a shutdown and push off a final budget package until early March.The House is scheduled to vote on the measure and send it to Joe Biden later in the day.The stopgap bill, passed by the Senate on a 77-18 vote, comes after a bipartisan spending deal between the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, this month and a subsequent agreement to extend current spending so the two chambers have enough time to pass individual spending bills.The temporary measure will run to 1 March for some federal agencies whose approved funds were set to run out on Friday and extend the remainder of government operations to 8 March.Johnson has been under pressure from his right flank to scrap the budget agreement with Schumer, and the bill to keep the government running will need Democratic support to pass the Republican-majority House. Johnson has insisted he will stick with the deal as moderates in the party have urged him not to back out.It would be the third time Congress has extended current spending as House Republicans have bitterly disagreed over budget levels and some on the right have demanded steeper cuts. The former House speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted by his caucus in October after striking an agreement with Democrats to extend current spending the first time. Johnson has also come under criticism as he has wrestled with how to appease his members and avoid a government shutdown in an election year.“We just needed a little more time on the calendar to do it and now that’s where we are,” Johnson said on Tuesday about the decision to extend federal funding yet again. “We’re not going to get everything we want.”Most House Republicans have so far refrained from saying that Johnson’s job is in danger. But a revolt of even a handful of Republicans could endanger his position in the narrowly divided House.The Virginia representative Bob Good, one of eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy, has been pushing Johnson to reconsider the deal with Schumer.“If your opponent in negotiation knows that you fear the consequence of not reaching an agreement more than they fear the consequence of not reaching an agreement, you will lose every time,” Good said this week.Other Republicans acknowledge Johnson is in a tough spot. “The speaker was dealt with the hand he was dealt,” said the Kentucky congressman Andy Barr. “We can only lose one vote on the majority side. I think it’s going to have to be bipartisan.”The short-term measure comes amid negotiations on a separate spending package that would provide wartime dollars to Ukraine and Israel and strengthen security at the US-Mexico border. Johnson is also under pressure from the right not to accept a deal that is any weaker than a House-passed border measure that has no Democratic support.Johnson, Schumer and other congressional leaders and committee heads visited the White House on Wednesday to discuss that spending legislation. Johnson used the meeting to push for stronger border security measures while Biden and Democrats detailed Ukraine’s security needs as it continues to fight Russia.Biden has requested a $110bn package for the wartime spending and border security. More

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    Kentucky’s ex-Survivor lawmaker rues ‘embarrassing’ cousin gaffe in incest bill

    A Kentucky state lawmaker and 2018 winner of the television competition Survivor had to hastily scrap a proposed measure that – if approved – would have unintentionally legalized sex between first cousins.After correcting the gaffe within a day, Nick Wilson – a Republican representative in Kentucky’s house of representatives – expressed hope that the misstep would not doom a measure whose purpose is to combat familial abuse.Wilson told the Guardian on Thursday that the entire episode was “frustrating” and “embarrassing”.“Due to the subject matter of the legislation, it was obviously quite embarrassing,” Wilson said. “It was also frustrating that it blew up so quickly, just because I was on a TV show five years ago.“I didn’t get a chance to fix the mistake – not even one day. I feel like most legislators would get that opportunity.”Wilson introduced a bill on Tuesday which in effect proposed removing first cousins from a list of unlawful incestuous relationships.A fierce backlash met the move quickly after a New York public defender and fellow Survivor alum, Eliza Orlins, went on TikTok to condemn Wilson’s proposal.“Kentucky – like so many other places – is facing a lot of issues, and this is Nick’s top legislative priority,” Orlins said. “No matter what Nick’s weird priorities are, your voices matter, and when your voices are heard, it actually has an impact in local politics.”After wishing a great day to her TikTok audience, she addressed Wilson directly. “Nick Wilson, I hope you have the day that you deserve,” she said.Wilson subsequently reversed course and said it was an unintentional “mistake” to have omitted first cousins from a list of relationships that Kentucky law defined as incestuous if they involved sex.“During the drafting process [of the bill], there was an inadvertent change, which struck ‘first cousins’ from the list of relationships included under the incest statute, and I failed to add it back in,” Wilson said in a statement. “During today’s session, I will withdraw [the measure] and refile a bill with the ‘first cousin’ language intact.”Many US states, including Kentucky, outright prohibit marriages between first cousins, while 19 states and the District of Columbia allow such a union. Some states, like Arizona and Maine, allow marriages between first cousins with certain exceptions.The commonwealth of Kentucky defines incest as: “deviate sexual intercourse [or] sexual contact with a person whom he or she knows to be his or her parent, child, grandparent, grandchild, great-grandparent, great-grandchild, uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, brother, sister, first cousin, ancestor, or descendant”.Wilson has since refiled the measure as house bill 289. And in addition to sexual intercourse, the measure adds “sexual contact” to the definition of incest.The reintroduced bill also adds incest to the violent offender statute.Wilson said his new bill made no other changes to current law.After making changes to the bill, Wilson said: “This is a bill to combat a problem of familial and cyclical abuse that transcends generations of Kentuckians. I understand that I made a mistake, but I sincerely hope my mistake doesn’t hurt the chances of the corrected version of the bill. It is a good bill, and I hope it will get a second chance.”Wilson also told the Guardian that he hoped the scrutiny he encountered leads to more awareness surrounding the issue of sexual abuse within family homes.“There have been many foster parents and survivors of sexual abuse reach out to me to thank me for pursuing this change in law,” Wilson said. “The amount of hopefulness I get from those calls and emails are much greater than any feelings of embarrassment or frustration that I’ve experienced in the past two days.”Wilson was previously a public defender and in 2022 ran unopposed for the state house representing its 82nd district. He competed in the reality TV show Survivor in 2018 and 2020 and was the competition’s champion in its 37th season. More

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    Outrage after Trump claims presidents have ‘complete and total’ immunity

    Donald Trump provoked outrage with an all-capitals 2am post to his Truth Social platform in which he claimed “full”, “total” and “complete and total presidential immunity” over acts committed in office.The comments prompted warnings that Trump intends to wield authoritarian powers should he return to the White House and come amid widespread fears that any Trump victory in the 2024 election would pose a dire threat to American democracy.After a crushing win in the Iowa caucuses on Monday, Trump is widely expected to easily grasp the Republican presidential nomination and is competitive with, or sometimes ahead of, Joe Biden in most polling.Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University historian who studies authoritarian leaders, said: “Trump is telling Americans very clearly that he will be jailing and killing Americans [if he returns to office next year].“Anyone who votes for him is complicit with these future crimes because of this transparency and these threats. Americans cannot say they did not know ahead of time.”Joe Walsh, a former rightwing Republican congressman turned Trump opponent, spoke to his party’s voters when he said: “A president with ‘full immunity’ is a king, is a dictator. He’s telling us what he wants. Is this what you want?”Trump wrote: “A president of the United States must have full immunity, without which it would be impossible for him [or] her to properly function. Any mistake, even if well intended, would be met by almost certain indictment by the opposing party at term end.“Even events that ‘cross the line’ must fall under total immunity, or it will be years of trauma trying to determine good from bad.”Joyce Vance, a former US attorney now a law professor at the University of Alabama, said: “One of the obvious problems with this (just one of them), is that no former president has ever been indicted. Just Trump.”Indicted four times, Trump faces 91 criminal charges, concerning election subversion (four federal and 13 state charges), retention of classified information (40, federal) and hush-money payments (34, state).He also faces attempts to remove him from the ballot for inciting an insurrection and civil suits concerning his businesses and a defamation claim arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Regardless, Trump leads Republican presidential polling by vast margins, having won in Iowa this week and standing poised to win in New Hampshire next Tuesday.His complaint on Thursday concerned arguments in his federal election subversion case, in which a DC appeals court is due to rule on the immunity claim.A hearing last week produced the spectacle of lawyers for Trump saying a president who ordered special forces units to kill political opponents could only be brought to account if impeached and convicted by Congress.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump incited the January 6 attack on Congress, an attempt to stop certification of his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden now linked to nine deaths, including law enforcement suicides, and more than 1,200 arrests. Trump was impeached over the riot but acquitted when enough Republicans in the Senate stayed loyal.After the DC hearing last week, Trump warned of “bedlam” if his criminal cases block a White House return.In his Truth Social rant, Trump said: “You can’t stop police from doing the job of strong and effective crime prevention because you want to guard against the occasional ‘rogue cop’ or ‘bad apple’.”Police officers do not enjoy blanket immunity.Trump continued: “Sometimes you just have to live with the ‘great but slightly imperfect’. All presidents must have complete and total presidential immunity, or the authority and decisiveness of a president of the United States will be stripped and gone forever. Hopefully this [DC appeals case] will be an easy decision.”Trump ended with an apparent appeal to another court, to which the case is headed.“God bless the supreme court!” the former president said, of a body to which he appointed three justices, cementing a 6-3 rightwing majority. More

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    US third-party centrists file formal complaint over election ‘conspiracy’

    The centrist group No Labels has filed a formal complaint with the justice department, asking it to investigate an “alleged unlawful conspiracy” to shut down its effort to secure ballot access for the 2024 presidential election.No Labels has not yet decided whether it will run a third party against Joe Biden and the Republican nominee, widely expected to be Donald Trump, in November’s presidential election. Critics say the effort would have the unintended consequence of hurting Biden and helping Trump.Last week No Labels sent an eight-page letter to the justice department’s Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for the civil rights division, and Nicole Argentieri, acting assistant attorney general for the criminal division, accusing its opponents of violating federal law including racketeering and a number of criminal civil rights provisions.“There is a group of activists and operatives and party officials who are participating in alleged illegal conspiracy to use intimidation, harassment and fear against representatives of No Labels, its donors and its potential candidates,” Dan Webb, a No Labels leader who has served as the US attorney in Chicago, told a press conference in Washington DC on Thursday.The letter cites examples including a recent Semafor report on an 80-minute call organised by Matt Bennett, co-founder of the thinktank Third Way. One attendee explained on the call how they would dissuade candidates from running on a No Labels unity ticket: “Through every channel we have, to their donors, their friends, the press, everyone – everyone – should send the message: if you have one fingernail clipping of a skeleton in your closet, we will find it.”In another case, Holly Page, a co-founder of No Labels, was allegedly approached by a representative of the Lincoln Project and told to walk away from the group. She was allegedly warned: “You have no idea of the forces aligned against you. You will never be able to work in Democratic politics again.”The letter also notes that Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, posted a tweet last year of a video in which he said No Labels and its leaders “need to be burned to the fucking ground politically”.At Thursday’s press conference, Pat McCrory, a national co-chair and former governor of North Carolina, responded: “Who do they think they are, Tony Soprano? I hope not.”Benjamin Chavis Jr, a No Labels national co-chair and a leader and veteran civil rights activist, said: “The alleged conspiracy to stop No Labels is a brazen voter suppression effort.“Based on the evidence that we have submitted to the United States Department of Justice, if individuals were working to frighten and harass an organisation seeking to register disenfranchised voters, the country would be outraged and those individuals would likely be prosecuted. That is what is happening today and needs to be exposed for what it is.”Joe Lieberman, a No Labels National founding chair and former senator, added: “It’s a matter of giving voice to millions of Americans who feel abandoned by the Democratic and Republican political establishments. They’re angry at the two major parties. Who can blame them?“And they’re profoundly disappointed that they’re going to be forced to choose once again between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. They want a third choice. There’s a lot of talk lately about democracy being on the ballot in 2024 and in many ways it is. But I think it’s really important to understand what we mean by the word democracy.”Demand for a third-party presidential candidate has reached record highs amid deep voter dissatisfaction with 81-year-old Biden and Trump, who faces 91 criminal charges across four cases. A Reuters/Ipsos poll in December showed six in 10 respondents were unhappy with the two-party system and wanted a third choice.Founded in 2009, No Labels is now on the ballot in 14 states and say it will decide in March whether to offer its ballot line to a unity presidential ticket. If it does, the Unity ticket presidential campaign will be responsible for securing ballot access in the final 18 states plus the District of Columbia.On Tuesday a federal judge blocked the Arizona secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, from recognizing candidates wanting to run for office under the No Labels banner aside from the party’s yet-to-be-chosen ticket for president and vice-president. Lieberman acknowledged that, should Nikki Haley drop out of the Republican primary race and express an interest in joining a No Labels ticket, she would “deserve serious consideration”.The Lincoln Project rejected No Labels’ legal complaint, saying in statement: “No Labels is a dark money group that is so consumed with its own quest for power and relevancy that it is willing to risk electing Trump, despite their own acknowledgment that he is a dangerous ideologue.“And like Trump, they want to weaponize the DoJ to get to attack their opponents for protected political speech. This is a desperate attempt to salvage their failing campaign and keep their fleeing supporters who have finally seen through their facade.” More

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    Palestinian students shot in Vermont speak out: ‘I know that it is a hate crime’

    Two Palestinian college students who were shot in Vermont said they suspected they were the targets of a hate crime in their most extensive public remarks since the attack.Hisham Awartani, Tahseen Ali Ahmad and Kinnan Abdalhamid were shot on 25 November while walking near the home of Awartani’s grandmother in Burlington, Vermont.In an interview with NBC News on Wednesday, Awartani and Abdalhamid – both 20 – said they believe their shooter took aim at them for being Palestinian.“I don’t think too much about if there’s gonna be hate crime charges,” Awartani said to NBC News about the triple shooting. “I just care that, like, justice is served. And to me, that is a part of it. But I know that it is a hate crime.”Awartani added that he wasn’t surprised that he faced violence as a Palestinian, especially having grown up in the occupied West Bank and witnessing Palestinians regularly brutalized by the Israeli army.“It’s odd because it happened in Burlington, Vermont. It’s not odd because it happened, full stop,” Awartani said, referring to the 25 November shooting.“In the West Bank growing up, it’s just something that’s normal. Like, so many unarmed young men getting shot by the Israeli army, and they’re just left to bleed out.“Therefore, when it happened to me, it was like, ‘Oh, this is where it happens. This is it.’”The three friends had come back from a trip to a local bowling alley, a fun activity meant to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday.Awartani and Abdalhamid told NBC they were speaking Arabic and wearing keffiyehs – a traditional headdress that has come to symbolize solidarity with Palestine – when they said they spotted a man waiting on his porch with a loaded firearm.Awartani and Abdalhamid told NBC that they believe the man may have seen the trio before and waited for them to return home.The man then walked down from his porch and began shooting at them, Awartani and Abdalhamid said to NBC.“Tahseen was screaming. He was shot first,” Abdalhamid said to NBC. “Hisham didn’t make a sound. As soon as Tahseen started screaming, I was running.”The shooting left Awartani paralyzed from the chest down. His family has set up a GoFundMe to handle the high costs associated with his care.Awartani and Abdalhamid told NBC that they don’t think about the shooting. Their attention has been with killings in Gaza and in the West Bank by Israeli strikes, with Awartani calling the attack “one drop in the ocean of what’s going on in Palestine”.More than 24,00 people have been killed and 60,000 injured in Gaza due to Israeli airstrikes, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Israel launched the airstrikes in response to the 7 October attack by Hamas that killed about 1,200.“What’s going on in Palestine, it’s still going on,” Awartani said. “And, like, that’s more on my mind right now, how there are still people – like, they’re starving to death. There are still people who are being maimed. There are still people who are – like, you know, don’t have access to clean water. There are still people who are, like, being shot at protests. So that, to me, is far more relevant than what happened to me.”Jason Eaton, 48, was later arrested in connection with the shooting and charged with three counts of attempted second-degree murder. Police have not confirmed if they believe the shooting was premeditated or motivated by hate as an investigation into the attack continues.Awartani attends Brown University. Ahmed and Abadalhamid are students of Haverford and Trinity colleges, respectively.The attack on the three friends took place amid sharp increases in Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiments since Hamas’s 7 October attack in Israel. Jewish groups have also reported a simultaneous increase in cases of antisemitism. More

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    Climate crisis ignored by Republicans as Trump vows to ‘drill, baby, drill’

    In the wake of an Iowa primary election chilled in a record blast of cold weather – which scientists say may, counterintuitively, have been worsened by global heating – Republican presidential candidates are embracing the fossil fuel industry tighter than ever, with little to say about the growing toll the climate crisis is taking upon Americans.The remaining contenders for the US presidential nomination – frontrunner Donald Trump, along with Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis – all used the Iowa caucus to promise surging levels of oil and gas drilling if elected, along with the wholesale abolition of Joe Biden’s climate change policies.Trump, who comfortably won the Iowa poll, said “we are going to drill, baby, drill” once elected, in a Fox News town hall on the eve of the primary. “We have more liquid gold under our feet; energy, oil and gas than any other country in the world,” the multiply indicted former president said. “We have a lot of potential income.”Trump also called clean energy a “new scam business” and went on a lengthy digression on how energy is important in the making of donuts and hamburgers. The Trump campaign has accused Biden of trying to prevent Americans from buying non-electric cars – no such prohibition exists – and even for causing people’s dishes to be dirty by imposing new efficiency standards for dishwashers.Haley, meanwhile, has called the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature climate bill that provides tax credits for renewable energy production and electric car purchases, a “communist manifesto” and used the Iowa election to promise to “roll back all of Biden’s green subsidies because they’re misplaced”. DeSantis, who came second in Iowa, said that on his first day as president he would “take Biden’s Green New Deal, we tear it up and we throw it in the trash can. It is bad for this country.”Last year was, globally, the hottest ever recorded, and scientists have warned of mounting calamities as the world barrels through agreed temperature limits. Last year, the US suffered a record number of disasters costing at least $1bn in damages, with the climate crisis spurring fiercer wildfires, storms and extreme heat.Such concerns were largely unvoiced in frigid Iowa, however, apart from by young climate activists who disrupted rallies held by Trump, Haley and DeSantis. On Sunday, a 17-year-old activist from the Sunrise climate group interrupted a Trump speech to shout: “Mr Trump your campaign is funded by fossil fuel millionaires. Do you represent them, or ordinary people like me?”She was drowned out by boos from Trump supporters, and then scolded from the stage by the former president, who told the activist to “go home to mommy.” He then said the protester was “young and immature”.The continued championing of fossil fuels, and dismissal of young people’s worries about climate change, shows that the Republican candidates are “determined to drag us into a chaotic world just to make a bit more money”, said Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of Sunrise.“Not a single Republican is addressing root causes of the climate crisis. They’ve been bought out by oil and gas billionaires,” said Shiney-Ajay, who added that young climate activists were also dismayed at Biden, who has overseen a record glut of oil and gas drilling, despite Republican claims he has hindered US energy production.“The reality is that every presidential candidate, including Joe Biden, is falling so far short of the climate ambition we need, despite there being millions of lives at stake,” she said.Some Republicans have warned that the party must take climate change seriously if it is to remain viable electorally, with increasing numbers of Americans alarmed about the impacts of global heating. “If conservatives are scared to talk about the climate, then we’re not going to have a seat at the table when decisions are made,” said Buddy Carter, a Republican congressman from Georgia. “We are right on policy, so we need a seat at the table.”Still, polling has shown that the climate crisis remains of minor importance to Republican voters, compared to issues such as the economy and inflation, with just 13% of them saying it is a top priority in a Pew survey last year. None of the party’s leading presidential candidates have sought to significantly change this dynamic, to the frustration of some climate-conscious conservatives.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Republican candidates can’t lose sight of the big picture amid the primary season,” said Danielle Butcher Franz, the chief executive of the advocacy arm of the American Conservation Coalition, a conservative climate group.“Beyond the primary, the next Republican nominee must win over the hearts and minds of young Americans by speaking to the issue they care most about: climate change.”Butcher Franz said there must be “more productive rhetoric and real policy solutions from Republicans. The race for 2024 is an opportunity to do so that no candidate has fully seized.”Even if the candidates aren’t talking much about climate change, its effects are still being directly felt as the Republican primary field moves on to New Hampshire. Icily cold temperatures have gripped much of the US – the Iowa caucus was the coldest on record – due to a blast of Arctic-like weather that has triggered power blackouts, halted flights and caused schools to shut in parts of the country.The Arctic is heating up at four times the rate of the global average, and scientists think this is affecting the jet stream, a river of strong winds that steers weather across the northern hemisphere, and the polar vortex, another current of winds that usually keeps frigid Arctic air over the polar region. Both these systems risk becoming “wavier”, recent research has found, meaning Arctic-like conditions can meander far further south than normal.The current blast of cold weather is “certainly much more likely given how much the planet is warming” said Judah Cohen, a meteorologist at Verisk Atmospheric and Environmental who has studied the phenomenon. “There is scientific evidence that makes severe winter weather consistent or explainable in a warming world. One does not negate the other.”Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at Woods Hole Research Center, said that while it seems counterintuitive, the science was “becoming clear” that extreme cold spells will be a consequence of global heating.“The irony is pretty rich” that Iowa has experienced such conditions during a Republican presidential primary, Francis added. “Of course, the deniers won’t see it that way, and won’t listen to any science that says otherwise.” More

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    It isn’t ‘anti-democratic’ to bar Trump from office. It’s needed to protect democracy | Steven Greenhouse

    Over the decades, several US supreme court justices have warned that the US constitution is not a suicide pact – in other words, that the constitution shouldn’t be interpreted in ways that jeopardize the survival of our nation and our democracy.Right now, however, I worry that the supreme court’s rightwing supermajority, in its anticipated rush to prohibit states from kicking Donald Trump off the ballot, will turn the constitution into a suicide pact. By letting an insurrectionist like Trump remain on the ballot – a man who spurned centuries of constitutional tradition by refusing to peacefully turn over the reins of power to the man who defeated him – the supreme court would be putting out a welcome mat to a candidate who has made no secret of his plans to trample all over the constitution and trash our democratic traditions.Many legal experts worry that the rightwing justices will focus on the wrong issue when the high court takes up the historic Colorado case about whether a state can kick Trump off the ballot – a case in which the court might also decide whether Trump should be disqualified from the ballot in all 50 states.When the court considers that case, the six conservative justices might focus on their concerns about infuriating rightwing voters, their political soulmates, if they rule that the constitution requires that Trump be disqualified as an insurrectionist. The justices will also no doubt worry that they’ll be seen as taking a high-handed, anti-democratic step if they deny voters the opportunity to vote for Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee.But the justices’ job is not to worry about angering the Maga crowd. Their job is to focus on enforcing the text of the constitution and, along with it, preserving our democracy. An insurrectionist candidate who stands a good chance of winning the presidency in November could drive a stake through the heart of America’s democracy.The Colorado case centers on the 14th amendment, a post-civil war measure that aimed to ensure all citizens – especially formerly enslaved people – the equal protection of the law. Section 3 of that amendment aimed to bar supporters of the Confederacy who had rebelled against the United States and its constitution from holding office: “No person shall be a senator or representative in Congress, or … hold any office, civil or military, under the United States … who, having previously taken an oath … 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.”One can’t honestly deny that Trump promoted and aided an insurrection. He unarguably gave “aid or comfort” to the January 6 assault on the Capitol, which was essentially a coup attempt that sought to prevent the rightfully elected president, Joe Biden, from taking office. In disqualifying Trump, the Colorado supreme court wrote: “The record amply established that the events of January 6 constituted a concerted and public use of force or threat of force by a group of people to hinder or prevent the US government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish the peaceful transfer of power in this country. Under any viable definition, this constituted an insurrection.”The House select committee on January 6 provided a mountain of evidence showing that Trump had planned and backed that insurrection. Trump not only “summoned tens of thousands of supporters to Washington for Jan. 6”, the committee established, but also urged them to march to the Capitol to “take back” the country. Even as rioters stormed the Capitol and assaulted the police, Trump tweeted messages that whipped up the violent crowd’s animus against the then vice-president, Mike Pence.Trump, the committee wrote, also “refused repeated requests over a multiple-hour period that he instruct his violent supporters to disperse and leave the Capitol”. Trump also refused to call in the national guard or any federal law enforcement to stop the assault on the Capitol.The Court’s job is to uphold and enforce the Constitution without fear or favor, and it shouldn’t be cowed by anyone, not by Trump’s supporters and certainly not by Trump, who dangerously warned of “big, big trouble” if the justices rule against him in this case.Constitutional scholars say the Supreme Court might engage in some legal legerdemain and search for some escape clause to keep Trump on the ballot and prohibit states from disqualifying him. Some scholars predict the justices will rule that Trump must first be convicted in court as an insurrectionist before he can be disqualified – even though many supporters of the Confederacy were disqualified from holding office without being convicted in court and even though Section 3 says nothing about requiring convictions.Some constitutional experts contend that Section 3 doesn’t apply to presidents and that Trump therefore shouldn’t be disqualified under it. Section 3 specifically mentions disqualifying Senators and House members, but it doesn’t mention the presidency. But that’s undoubtedly because Section 3’s authors never dreamed that a past insurrectionist would ever be running for president. There can’t be any doubt that Section 3’s authors would have insisted on disqualifying Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, if he had become a candidate for the presidency of the United States.If the supreme court’s six rightwing justices allow Trump to stay on the ballot, they can do so only by turning their backs on the methods of constitutional interpretation that they have repeatedly trumpeted: textualism and originalism. Not only is the text of Section 3 crystal clear about barring insurrectionists, but the Radical Republicans who wrote the 14th amendment would have been repulsed by the idea of letting an insurrectionist like Trump run for the highest office of the land.Trump of course complains that the push to disqualify him is a leftist plot. But the two constitutional scholars who led the way in arguing that Trump should be disqualified – William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen – are highly regarded conservative members of the Federalist Society. Moreover, one of the jurists most respected by conservatives, former federal judge J Michael Luttig, has lauded the Colorado supreme court’s decision as “unassailable”.In decades past, the US supreme court did not shrink from issuing decisions that offended and angered millions of Americans, whether it was enraging many white southerners by barring school segregation in Brown v Board of Education, or infuriating millions of women by overturning Roe v Wade, or angering a wide swath of Democrats by cutting short the vote count to deliver victory to George W Bush over Al Gore. In the Colorado disqualification case, the justices should not shrink from angering Trump supporters. The justices should do what they’ve taken an oath to do: enforce the letter of the law.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNotwithstanding what Trump’s defenders say, those who seek to disqualify Trump are not suppressing democracy. They are seeking to enforce the constitution’s clear language against the nation’s most prominent insurrectionist. The person who is seeking to suppress democracy is Trump (along with many of his Maga supporters).Trump was anti-democratic in seeking to overturn Biden’s legitimate, 51-47% victory in 2020. Trump was anti-democratic when he called for terminating the constitution. Trump has threatened to be a dictator on day one, and someone who threatens to be dictator on his first day in office might not stop there.Moreover, whenever Trump loses – for instance, when he lost the 2016 Iowa caucuses to Ted Cruz – he claims that he was cheated and demands that legitimate democratic results be discarded. Trump’s philosophy is to accept election results only when he wins and never when he loses. What can be more anti-democratic than that? That anti-democratic philosophy fueled the January 6 insurrection.There’s no denying that on a certain level it would be anti-democratic to bar a popular candidate like Trump from the ballot, and, yes, that could stir up an ugly and perhaps violent and illegal response from the Maga crowd. Yet let’s not forget that much of the constitution is anti-democratic and counter-majoritarian; it, for instance, prohibits a majority of lawmakers from restricting your freedom of speech or your freedom to practice your religion.Those who warn that it would be anti-democratic to kick Trump off the ballot should realize that Trump’s election as president would be a far graver and longer-lasting risk to our democracy. This is a man who has talked of being a dictator, of terminating the constitution, of using his second presidential term to exact vengeance against his enemies and critics. This is a man who even floated the idea of executing Mark Milley, the general who was chairman of Trump’s joint chiefs of staff.If the supreme court lets Trump remain on the ballot, history may remember John Roberts and company as the court that gave a bright green light to the election of an insurrectionist who would end our democracy as we know it.For the nine justices, the bottom line should be not only that Trump was an insurrectionist, but that Trump has loudly signaled that if he’s elected to a second term, he will trample all over our constitutional and democratic norms. If the justices interpret the constitution to let insurrectionist Trump remain on the ballot, the Roberts court may be taking a giant, highly regrettable step toward turning our constitution into a suicide pact for our democracy.
    Steven Greenhouse is an American labor and workplace journalist and writer More

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    in US Politics

    California governor vows to block proposed ban on tackle football for kids

    California’s governor said he will not sign a proposed ban on tackle football for children under 12, ending advocates’ short-lived hopes of having the bill become law this year.“I will not sign legislation that bans youth tackle football,” Newsom said in a statement late on Tuesday. “I am deeply concerned about the health and safety of our young athletes, but an outright ban is not the answer.”Last week, a legislative committee sent the proposal from Democratic assemblymember Kevin McCarty to the floor of the state assembly, clearing the way for a vote by the end of the month.But even if the bill were to pass, Newsom’s pledge not to sign it – first reported by Politico – means there is little, if any, chance of it becoming law this year. While California lawmakers have the power to override a veto, they have not done that in more than four decades.The proposal to ban youth tackle football gained momentum this year amid increasing concern about concussions along with the rise in popularity of flag football. The proposal would have have been phased in gradually through 2029 and would have have kids play flag football until age 12, giving athletes about three years of playing tackle football before entering high school. Advocates say that would limit children’s risk of brain damage, which studies have shown increases the longer a person plays tackle football.But the bill prompted strong opposition from parents, coaches and kids. Many attended a public hearing in the California capitol last week wearing their football jerseys while asking lawmakers not to pass the bill.California has regulated youth tackle football, with Newsom signing a law that took effect in 2021 limiting teams to just two full-contact practices per week of not more than 30 minutes each during the regular season. That law also required youth tackle football coaches to have training on concussions and other head injuries.But the proposed ban was a step too far for the governor, who is a potential candidate for president beyond 2024. Newsom, now in his second term, is known nationally for his liberal policies, including banning the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035. But he also has acted as a bulwark against the Democratic legislature’s most progressive ideas, including vetoing a bill last year that would have decriminalized some psychedelic mushrooms and some other hallucinogens.Newsom, who has four children, pledged to work with lawmakers “to strengthen safety in youth football – while ensuring parents have the freedom to decide which sports are most appropriate for their children”.“As part of that process, we will consult with health and sports medicine experts, coaches, parents, and community members to ensure California maintains the highest standards in the country for youth football safety,” Newsom said. “We owe that to the legions of families in California who have embraced youth sports.”Ron White, president of the California Youth Football Alliance, thanked Newsom for pledging to not sign the bill in a video message posted to X, formerly known as Twitter.“We collectively look forward to working with you and the California legislative body to drive the California Youth Football Act as the most comprehensive youth tackle football safety measure in the country,” White said. More