Evelyn Reynolds

Taylor Swift is at the apex of her fame with a sold-out world stadium tour and now a social media storm as deepfake pornographic images of the popstar rapidly spread through X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, last week.With intense media focus also on her relationship with Travis Kelce, a star football player for the Kansas City Chiefs, Swift has found herself at the center of rightwing commentary in recent weeks.A raft of influential rightwing figures have begun to spread a conspiracy theory claiming that Swift is a “Pentagon asset” who, along with unnamed left-leaning forces, will influence the presidential election by endorsing Joe Biden.Earlier in her career, Swift, 34, avoided discussing Democrats or Republicans, but she has become more political over time. In 2018, she supported Democratic candidates in Tennessee, where she spent some of her childhood. In the 2020 election, she endorsed Joe Biden and vowed to then president Donald Trump on Twitter that “we will vote you out”.As we head further into the 2024 election cycle, we’d like to find out what you think about Swift taking a stance on US political issues. Which political issues would you like or not like her to take a stance on? Would her endorsement of a 2024 presidential candidate influence who you will vote for? Why or why not? More

House Republicans voted along party lines after midnight on Wednesday to move toward impeaching the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, for a “willful and systematic” refusal to enforce immigration laws as border security becomes a top 2024 election issue.In a charge against a cabinet official unseen in nearly 150 years, the homeland security committee debated all day on Tuesday and well into the night before recommending two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas to the full House.The committee Republicans voted in favor, while the Democrats unified against, 18-15.The partisan showdown reflected the Republicans’ efforts to make the Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s hardline deportation approach to immigration their own.That approach was mirrored on a second front on Tuesday, as Republicans also lambasted the border deal recently brokered between the Joe Biden White House and a bipartisan group of senators, Democrats and Republicans alike.Mayorkas, in a letter sent to the Republican chair of the House committee on homeland security before the hearing began, dismissed the impeachment process against him as “politically motivated”.“I have been privileged to serve our country for most of my professional life. I have adhered scrupulously and fervently to the oath of office I have taken six times in my public service career,” Mayorkas wrote.“I assure you that your false accusations do not rattle me and do not divert me from the law enforcement and broader public service mission to which I have devoted most of my career and to which I remain devoted.”The Republican chair of the committee, Mark Green of Tennessee, criticized Mayorkas’s letter as an inadequate response to concerns about the situation at the US-Mexican border, where arrests for illegal crossings have reached record highs.“This 11th-hour response demonstrates the lack of seriousness with which Secretary Mayorkas views his responsibilities,” Green said. “We cannot allow this man to remain in office any longer. The time for accountability is now.”Democrats retorted that Republicans were making a farce out of the impeachment process by rushing to oust a cabinet official without showing any wrongdoing. House Republicans have presented no clear evidence that Mayorkas committed high crimes and misdemeanors, which is the requirement for impeachment. Their resolution accuses the cabinet secretary of refusing to comply with the law and breaching public trust.“We’re here based on two completely fabricated, unsupported and never-used-before articles of impeachment,” said the Democratic congressman Dan Goldman. “This is completely debasing and demeaning the impeachment clause of the United States constitution, and it is a gross, gross injustice to the credibility of this institution.”Now that the Republican-controlled committee has advanced the resolution, the House speaker, the Republican Mike Johnson of Louisiana, has indicated that the full chamber will vote on impeaching Mayorkas in the coming days. Even if the resolution passes the House, it will certainly fail in the Senate, where Democrats hold a majority.To demonstrate his scorn over the proceedings, the ranking Democrat on the committee, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, introduced several procedural motions to delay the progress of the hearing.Thompson accused Republicans of attempting to impeach Mayorkas to boost the political prospects of Trump.“If House Republicans were serious about improving conditions along the border, they would provide the department the funding necessary to do so. They have not,” Thompson said. “They don’t want progress. They don’t want solutions. They want a political issue. And most of all, they want to please their disgraced former president.”Meanwhile, as the House moves forward with impeaching Mayorkas, Trump has called on Republicans to sink the border deal. Johnson has said that the proposal, a bipartisan arrangement that would grant Joe Biden the authority to shut down the border between ports of entry when attempted crossings increase to a certain level, would be “dead on arrival” in the House.Johnson is expected to address the House on Wednesday. At a press conference on Tuesday, he dismissed claims that Republicans were doing Trump’s bidding as “absurd” and insisted they were focused on addressing the situation at the border.“Our duty is to do right by the American people, to protect the people. The first and most important job of the federal government is to protect its citizens. We’re not doing that under President Biden,” Johnson said. “Our majority is small. We only have it in one chamber, but we’re trying to use every ounce of leverage that we have to make sure that this issue is addressed.”The White House attacked Johnson for flip-flopping, noting that the speaker previously called on members of both parties to “come together and address the broken border”.“Today, Speaker Johnson claimed he believes action should be taken to secure the border,” said the White House spokesperson Andrew Bates. “That’s exactly what President Biden and Republicans and Democrats in the Senate are doing. Speaker Johnson should join them.” More

The progressive US congressman Jamaal Bowman is seeking to distance himself from conspiracy theories about the deadly September 11 terrorist attacks which he published on a personal blog that he ran before his career in elected office.The New York representative was linked to the blog in question by the Daily Beast on Monday as he faces a substantial primary challenge from a fellow Democrat over his criticism of Israeli military strikes in Gaza in response to Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack.Bowman was also grappling with the Daily Beast’s reporting after his 2023 fine and misdemeanor guilty plea for apparently pulling a fire alarm at the US Capitol shortly before the US House was supposed to vote on a government funding bill. Though he maintained that the fire alarm pull was accidental, the House censured Bowman, who was accused of trying to delay the funding bill vote.“I don’t believe anything that these cranks have said, and my life’s work has proved that,” said a statement that Bowman distributed to media outlets about the far-right conspiracy theories once featured on a blog.Bowman’s statement alluded to a resolution that condemned the racist white replacement theory that drove a gunman to murder 11 Black people in Buffalo in 2022 and said: “My life’s work has proved that … I’ve called out the endless bullshit of the far right.”The deactivated relentless-strongback.blogspot.com blog contained Bowman’s thoughts on the news and other topics when he was a New York City middle school principal. Some of the writings seemed to express doubts about the established history of the September 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in 2001 after terrorists hijacked and crashed passenger planes into New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon in Washington DC and a field in Pennsylvania.“Hmm … / Multiple explosions / Heard before / And during the collapse / Hmm … ,” one piece of writing, resembling free verse, at the blog said.Another piece read: “Allegedly / Two other planes / The Pentagon / Pennsylvania / Hijacked by terrorist / Minimal damage done / Minimal debris found / Hmm.”As the Daily Beast reported, those writings appeared to refer to the disproven fringe theory that one of the World Trade Center buildings that collapsed on 9/11 was actually felled by an intentional, controlled demolition. The writings also seemed to refer to the Pentagon strike that caused the facility’s outer wall to collapse while killing 184 people. And they also seemingly made short mention of the hijacking that ended in Pennsylvania with dozens of deaths and considerable debris.Bowman’s blog also suggested that readers watch Loose Change and Zeitgeist, films that propagated 9/11 conspiracies peddled among the far right. The Daily Beast noted that both were favored by the gunman who shot six people to death and wounded then congresswoman Gabby Giffords in 2011. Meanwhile, the Daily Beast added, Alex Jones has spoken flatteringly of Zeitgeist and served as an executive producer of the final cut of Loose Change – before the rightwing provocateur was hit with a $1.5bn judgment for spreading lies that the deadly 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax aimed at forcing Americans to accept gun control.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBowman’s statement maintained “few people ever read” his blog, parts of which can still be accessed through the Internet Archive. He added that some of its posts were inspired by research he conducted into “a wide range of books, films and articles” as he debated pursuing a doctorate.“I of course do not believe any of these conspiracy theories that are pushed by the same right-wing fanatics who have always been opposed to my candidacy and presence in Congress,” Bowman’s statement said.Since joining the House in 2021, Bowman’s brand of leftwing progressive politics has indeed been pilloried by conservatives, including some who tried to compare him to the Donald Trump supporters who attacked Congress on 6 January 2021.Bowman said his office was also inundated with angry calls after he joined a few House members who opposed a resolution supporting Israel’s ongoing strikes in Gaza. And by December, George Latimer, a pro-Israel Democratic politician from Westchester county, New York, announced he would run for Bowman’s seat as the incumbent seeks a third term in the House during the upcoming election cycle. More

A proposal from an Arizona lawmaker calls for the state legislature to decide on presidential electors instead of adhering to a popular vote.The state senator Anthony Kern, a Republican, served as a fake elector in 2020, falsely asserting that Donald Trump won the state. Those involved in the fake electors schemes in several states have been charged. In Arizona, the fake electors are under investigation by the Democratic attorney general, her office has confirmed. Kern also attended the 6 January 2021 rally at the US Capitol.The senate concurrent resolution says that the “sole authority to appoint presidential electors” should fall to the legislature. It calls on the legislature to stay in session during presidential election years for this purpose. As a concurrent resolution, the proposal does not require the governor’s signature and does not have the force of law; it functions more to state the legislative body’s position on an issue.Such a change would be a dramatic departure from today’s democratic process, where voters elect a candidate for president and states allocate electors according to whoever won the popular vote in their state as part of the electoral college process.As a key swing state, Arizona’s elections will again take center stage in 2024. The state’s Republicans have remained gripped by election fervor, with prominent lawmakers and candidates insisting the 2020 election was stolen and seeking changes to laws that could limit voters’ power. More

A partisan showdown was on display on Tuesday as House Republicans attempted to escalate immigration and border issues on two fronts.Republicans moved forward with efforts to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, as they lambasted the border deal recently brokered between the Joe Biden White House and a bipartisan group of senators, in a split-screen that Democrats criticized as hypocritical.A House committee convened on Tuesday to consider two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, who attacked Republicans’ accusations against him as “false”, “baseless” and “inaccurate”.In a letter sent to the Republican chair of the House committee on homeland security just hours before the markup hearing began, Mayorkas dismissed the impeachment process as “politically motivated”. House Republicans have presented no clear evidence that Mayorkas committed high crimes and misdemeanors, which is the requirement for impeachment, but their resolution accuses the cabinet secretary of refusing to comply with the law and breaching public trust.“I have been privileged to serve our country for most of my professional life. I have adhered scrupulously and fervently to the oath of office I have taken six times in my public service career,” Mayorkas wrote in his letter. “I assure you that your false accusations do not rattle me and do not divert me from the law enforcement and broader public service mission to which I have devoted most of my career and to which I remain devoted.”The Republican chair of the committee, Mark Green of Tennessee, criticized Mayorkas’s letter as a woefully inadequate response to concerns about the situation at the US-Mexican border, where arrests for illegal crossings have reached record highs.“This 11th-hour response demonstrates the lack of seriousness with which Secretary Mayorkas views his responsibilities,” Green said in his opening statement at the markup hearing. “We cannot allow this man to remain in office any longer. The time for accountability is now.”Democrats retorted that Republicans were making a farce out of the impeachment process by rushing to oust a cabinet official without evidence of wrongdoing.“We’re here based on two completely fabricated, unsupported and never used before articles of impeachment,” Dan Goldman, a Democrat of New York, said at the hearing. “This is completely debasing and demeaning the impeachment clause of the United States constitution, and it is a gross, gross injustice to the credibility of this institution.”The Republican-controlled committee is expected to advance the resolution, and the House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson of Louisiana, has indicated that the full chamber will vote on impeaching Mayorkas in the coming days. Even if the resolution passes the House, it will certainly fail in the Senate, where Democrats hold a majority.To demonstrate his scorn over the proceedings, the ranking Democrat on the committee, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, introduced several procedural motions to delay the progress of the hearing. Thompson accused Republicans of attempting to impeach Mayorkas to boost the political prospects of Donald Trump, who is widely expected to win his party’s presidential nomination.“If House Republicans were serious about improving conditions along the border, they would provide the department the funding necessary to do so. They have not,” Thompson said in his opening statement. “They don’t want progress. They don’t want solutions. They want a political issue. And most of all, they want to please their disgraced former president. The extreme Maga [‘Make America Great Again’] Republicans who are running the House of Representatives are deeply unserious people.”While the House moves forward with impeaching Mayorkas, Trump has called on Republicans to sink the bipartisan border and national security deal. Johnson has said that the proposal, which would grant Joe Biden the authority to shut down the border between ports of entry when attempted crossings increase to a certain level, would be “dead on arrival” in the House.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt a press conference held on Tuesday, Johnson dismissed claims that House Republicans were doing Trump’s bidding as “absurd” and insisted they were focused on addressing the situation at the border.“Our duty is to do right by the American people, to protect the people. The first and most important job of the federal government is to protect its citizens. We’re not doing that under President Biden,” Johnson said. “Our majority is small. We only have it in one chamber, but we’re trying to use every ounce of leverage that we have to make sure that this issue is addressed.”The White House then attacked Johnson for flip-flopping on the passage of a bipartisan immigration bill, noting that the speaker previously called on members of both parties to “come together and address the broken border”.“Today, Speaker Johnson claimed he believes action should be taken to secure the border,” said the White House spokesperson Andrew Bates. “That’s exactly what President Biden and Republicans and Democrats in the Senate are doing. Speaker Johnson should join them.”Speaking on the House floor, Jim McGovern, a Democrat of Massachusetts, mocked Republicans’ assertions that they were entirely focused on policy concerns and emphasized the challenges of the current divided Congress. While Republicans hold a narrow majority in the House, Democrats control both the Senate and the White House.“I will say to my Republican friends: you are not in control of everything. You don’t have a dictatorship,” McGovern said. “If you want to get something done, we’re going to have to compromise.” More

The congresswoman Cori Bush has confirmed that the US Department of Justice is investigating whether the Missouri Democrat misused campaign funds for security services, an accusation she denied as “simply false”.In a statement, Bush said her campaign was “fully cooperating” with the investigation and said she had always “complied with all applicable laws and House rules”.“I hold myself, my campaign, and my position to the highest levels of integrity. I also believe in transparency, which is why I can confirm that the Department of Justice is reviewing my campaign’s spending on security services,” said Bush, part of a progressive group of Democratic women known as “the Squad”.She added that the allegations were rooted in “baseless complaints” raised by rightwing organizations who have long made her a target.In a lengthy statement, Bush, a nurse and Black Lives Matter activist turned lawmaker who represents the St Louis area, said she has endured threats to her “physical safety and life” since before she took office in 2021.Bush said that as a rank-and-file member of Congress she is not entitled to receive security protection by the House and has instead used campaign funds to pay for security services.“I have not used any federal tax dollars for personal security services,” she said. “Any reporting that I have used federal funds for personal security is simply false.”At issue, the congresswoman continued, was her decision to hire her husband, Cortney Merritts, to provide her with security services. She paid a total of $62,359 to Merritts for security services in 2022 before the pair were married, according to the St Louis Post-Dispatch.“In particular, the nature of these allegations have been around my husband’s role on the campaign,” she said.“In accordance with all applicable rules, I retained my husband as part of my security team to provide security services because he has had extensive experience in this area, and is able to provide the necessary services at or below a fair market rate.”She said that the Office of Congressional Ethics had investigated the matter last year and voted to dismiss the allegations.“In September of last year, after conducting a months-long investigation, the Office of Congressional Ethics found no wrongdoing and voted unanimously to dismiss the case,” she wrote.“I look forward to this same outcome from all pending investigations.”The department has subpoenaed the House sergeant at arms, the chamber’s top law enforcement official, for records relating to the alleged misspending, according to six sources with knowledge about the investigation, Punchbowl reported.Bush became the first Black woman to represent Missouri in Congress, after her 2020 victory against the 10-term representative Lacy Clay. She held an event on Saturday to kick off her latest re-election campaign.Bush said: “I am under no illusion that these rightwing organizations will stop politicizing and pursuing efforts to attack me and the work that the people of St Louis sent me to Congress to do: to lead boldly, to legislate change my constituents can feel, and to save lives.” More

The Illinois board of elections has voted unanimously to keep Donald Trump on its primary ballot, rejecting objections brought by voters who challenged Trump’s eligibility on grounds that he had aided in insurrection on January 6.The decision was made on narrow procedural grounds, and is almost certain to be appealed. It is just the latest in a mixed series of official rulings on whether Trump can appear on the ballot amid a wave of challenges to his candidacy in multiple states.Officials in Colorado and Maine have ruled that Trump cannot appear on their ballots, though those decisions are facing further legal challenges, while Illinois becomes the latest state where officials have rejected attempts to boot Trump from the ballot.The US supreme court has scheduled oral arguments on this question for next week, and will likely have the final say on whether Trump is constitutionally ineligible to run for president because of his actions leading up to the January 6 attack at the US Capitol.At issue in this particular case was the question of whether or not the board of elections has the authority and jurisdiction to interpret constitutional questions. Matthew Piers, an attorney representing the objectors, argued the board “not only has the authority to determine an objection based on the United States constitution, but indeed you have the clear mandatory duty to do so”.Adam Merrill, Trump’s counsel, flatly denied Trump had participated in insurrection and argued the elections board could not make a determination on the question anyway.One Republican member of the bipartisan board made it clear that her decision was based on the question of whether the state board had the authority to weigh in on this question, not on whether Trump should be disqualified.“I want it to be clear that this Republican believes there was an insurrection on January 6,” declared GOP board member Catherine McCrory. “There’s no doubt in my mind that he manipulated, instigated, aided and abetted an insurrection on January 6. However, having said that, it is not my place to rule on that today.”The Illinois petitioners calling for Trump to be excluded from the Illinois ballot argued he is disqualified from office given article 3 of the 14th amendment, which states that any public official who has taken an oath of allegiance to the constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or given “aid or comfort” to its enemies must be disqualified from running for office again.In their 87-page petition, the Illinois voters said the January 6 attack was insurrectionary – and that “the effort to overthrow the results of the 2020 election by unlawful means” amounted to rebellion.On 28 January, Clark Erickson, a hearing officer for the board of elections tasked with evaluating the ballot challenge, said he agreed that Trump had committed insurrection and should be disqualified from appearing on the ballot – but that the matter should be left to a higher court.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe attorney representing the challengers seeking to remove Trump from the ballot indicated immediately after the decision that the petitioners would appeal it in court.Petitioners in more than a dozen states have invoked the 14th amendment to attempt to bar Trump from the ballot in 2024 on grounds that his involvement with the January 6 insurrection disqualifies him from office. Ratified in the wake of the civil war, the 14th amendment also establishes birthright citizenship and guarantees everyone in the US “equal protection” under the law.Trump’s lawyers have asked the US supreme court to put a “swift and decisive end to these ballot-disqualification efforts”, which, they argued, “threaten to disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans”.The Trump campaign has similarly argued the push to disqualify him from ballots across the US amounts to an unfair and anti-democratic campaign by his detractors. More

E Jean Carroll says the $83.3m awarded to her in her defamation case against Donald Trump shows “we don’t need to be afraid” of the former president.“It was an astonishing discovery for me – he’s nothing,” Carroll said on Monday night on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show. Comparing Trump to “a walrus snorting” and “a rhino flopping his hands”, the former Elle magazine columnist added: “He can be knocked down.”The jury in Carroll’s case against Trump in federal court in New York decided on Friday that she deserved $65m and $18.3m in punitive and compensatory damages, respectively, after defamatory statements the presumptive 2024 Republican White House nominee made against her over allegations that he sexually abused her.Those damages were in addition to an award of about $10m against Trump in May, when another jury held the ex-president liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a department store changing room in the mid-1990s.Carroll spent Monday making the rounds on the national media circuit, first appearing on ABC’s Good Morning America and pledging to give money from her judgment to something Trump “hates”, such as “a fund for the women who have been sexually assaulted by him”.She also said on Good Morning America that she was terrified to confront Trump in open court alongside her attorney but ultimately came to realize that he was like “an emperor without clothes”.Carroll revisited that theme in her later conversation on Maddow’s show.“Three, four days before trial, I had an actual breakdown,” Carroll told Maddow. “I lost my ability to speak, I lost my words, I couldn’t talk and I couldn’t go on … That’s how frightened I was.”But Carroll reiterated her imagination was worse than anything she encountered.“Amazingly, I looked out, and he was nothing,” Carroll said to Maddow. “He was nothing. He was a phantom. It was the people around him who were giving him power. He himself was nothing.”Carroll also joked to Maddow that she would take her shopping for a new wardrobe and buy her a penthouse with some of the money Trump had been ordered to pay up.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionElsewhere on Friday, Trump went on Truth Social after the decision came down and fumed about how the US court system was “out of control”.He also said he intended to appeal the verdict awarded to Carroll, which came in the middle of his legal problems seemingly multiplying.Not only has other civil litigation in New York put his business practices under scrutiny, he is also facing more than 90 criminal charges in various jurisdictions. Some of those charges include attempting to forcibly overturn the results of the 2020 election, illegally retaining government secrets after his presidency, and giving hush-money payments to an adult film actor who has alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with him.Carroll and her lead attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said on Monday on Good Morning America that they were confident they would collect Friday’s judgment against Trump.“I think we planted our flag,” Carroll added on MSNBC. “I think we’ve made a statement that things are going to be different – that there is going to be a new way of doing this in this country.” More