Elections

The Jan. 6 committee’s hearing on Thursday, which documented the relentless but unsuccessful campaign by President Donald J. Trump to pressure Vice President Mike Pence into helping him to reverse his defeat in the 2020 election, swerved wildly at times between wonky discussions of constitutional law and unsettling images of the threats and violence that Mr. Trump’s attacks on Mr. Pence inspired.But at the heart of the committee’s presentation was a straightforward narrative.Weeks before the mob attack on the Capitol, Mr. Trump joined forces with a law professor named John Eastman, who was espousing a theory that Mr. Pence, in his role as president of the Senate, had the power to alter the outcome of the election — or at least to delay certification of Mr. Trump’s defeat.Armed with this dubious legal cudgel, and with his other avenues for retaining power closing off, Mr. Trump pushed and pushed at Mr. Pence, including publicly on Jan. 6, helping to rile up his supporters and trigger the riot at the Capitol.Mr. Pence — backed by his own advisers and other legal experts — resisted Mr. Trump from the moment the idea came up.Here are four takeaways from Thursday’s hearing.Even Eastman doubted his plan’s legality, and he let Trump know that.The panel displayed on Thursday an image of the handwritten notes of Greg Jacob, attorney for Vice President Mike Pence, from a meeting with John Eastman.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Trump went ahead with the pressure campaign on Mr. Pence even though Mr. Eastman, a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas and a law professor at Chapman University, was less than certain at times about the legality and political viability of his own plan.The committee, for example, introduced an email that Mr. Eastman had written in the early stages of the scheme, in which he said that the idea of having lawmakers in pro-Trump states draft alternate slates of electors to give Mr. Pence a reason for disputing the results was “dead on arrival in Congress.”Mr. Eastman also admitted in a private conversation with Mr. Pence’s top lawyer, Greg Jacob, that if the Supreme Court ever had to rule on the legality of a vice president deciding the results of an election on his own, the court would unanimously vote to toss the matter, Mr. Jacob testified.But more important, Mr. Jacob told the committee in a videotaped deposition — snippets of which were played during the hearing — that Mr. Eastman had admitted in Mr. Trump’s presence that the plan to pressure Mr. Pence violated an 1887 law known as the Electoral Count Act. According to Mr. Jacob, Mr. Eastman acknowledged the illegality of the scheme in front of Mr. Trump on Jan. 4, 2021, just two days before Mr. Pence was to oversee the certification of the election.That crucial admission by Mr. Eastman was highlighted by Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the committee’s vice chairwoman, who has long suggested that Mr. Trump could be charged with a federal crime for the role he played in obstructing the certification of the vote count on Jan. 6.The Themes of the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsMaking a Case Against Trump: The committee appears to be laying out a road map for prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump. But the path to any trial is uncertain.Day One: During the first hearing, the panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Day Two: In its second hearing, the committee assembled an account of how Mr. Trump’s advisers urged him not to declare victory on election night in 2020, but instead he listened to Rudolph W. Giuliani.A Striking Contrast: Many Trump officials have told the committee that they tried to dissuade the former president from his bid to overturn the election. But at the time, their words were far different in public.Fund-Raising Tactics: The Jan. 6 panel has raised questions about Mr. Trump’s aggressive solicitations, accusing him of misleading donors with election fraud claims.If prosecutors can prove that both Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman were aware in advance that the scheme to pressure Mr. Pence would violate the law, it could be an important piece of evidence suggesting intent, should the Justice Department decide to pursue a criminal case against either of them.Both Ms. Cheney and a colleague on the committee, Representative Pete Aguilar, Democrat of California, mentioned that a federal judge had already ruled in a related civil suit that Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman most likely conspired together to obstruct the certification of the election and to commit fraud against the United States.In his ruling from March, Judge David O. Carter wrote that “the illegality of the plan was obvious,” calling it a “coup in search of a legal theory.”Mr. Eastman was apparently sufficiently worried about being prosecuted for his role that he inquired a few days after Jan. 6 about getting a pardon before Mr. Trump left office.Pence never wavered on rebuffing Trump.Vice President Mike Pence, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, certifying the results of the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesIf there was one thing the committee’s hearing made clear, it was that Mr. Pence, despite his history of loyalty to Mr. Trump, never believed he had the power to decide the election — and almost no one else in Mr. Trump’s orbit did, either.According to Mr. Jacob, Mr. Pence’s “first instinct” was to reject the notion out of hand, undercutting assertions by Mr. Trump’s allies at the time that he was open to the idea. Mr. Jacob told the committee that even during his first meeting with Mr. Pence about Mr. Eastman’s plan, the vice president was horrified, saying he did not believe that the founders who “abhorred concentrated power” would have ever agreed that one person — especially one who had an interest in the outcome — could have exercised sole discretion over an election.Mr. Pence, it turned out, had wide support both inside and outside the White House. The committee, in its presentation, offered up a lengthy list of aides and advisers who seemed to disagree with Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman.In a recorded deposition, Marc Short, Mr. Pence’s chief of staff, said that Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s own chief of staff, agreed that the vice president did not have a broad or decisive role to play in determining election results.Another top Trump aide, Jason Miller, in his own recorded deposition, told the committee that Pat Cipollone, Mr. Trump’s White House counsel, thought Mr. Eastman’s plan was “nutty.” He added that Sean Hannity, the very pro-Trump Fox News host, felt that Mr. Pence had done the “right thing” by rebuffing it.Even Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, seemed to doubt Mr. Eastman’s legal theory, according to Eric Herschmann, a former top White House lawyer. But, as Mr. Herschmann noted in a recorded deposition, that did not stop Mr. Giuliani from publicly promoting Mr. Eastman’s plan on Jan. 6.There was no legal underpinning to the Eastman plan.J. Michael Luttig, a former federal appeals court judge, speaking during Thursday’s hearing.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAt times, the hearing sounded not unlike like a law school seminar on election procedure, with highly technical discussions of how the vice president’s role on Jan. 6 fit into the 12th Amendment and the Electoral Count Act.Leading those discussions was J. Michael Luttig, a former federal appeals court judge, revered by conservatives. On the morning before the Capitol attack, Judge Luttig posted a thread of messages on Twitter asserting that Mr. Pence had no power to use his own discretion in deciding the election.“The only responsibility and power of the Vice President under the Constitution is to faithfully count the electoral college votes as they have been cast,” Judge Luttig wrote.He added: “The Constitution does not empower the vice president to alter in any way the votes that have been cast, either by rejecting certain of them or otherwise.”In his testimony on Thursday, Judge Luttig denounced Mr. Eastman’s plan as “constitutional mischief,” adding that if Mr. Pence had gone along with it, it would have “plunged America into what I believe would have been tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis in America.”The pressure campaign helped trigger the violence.Supporters of President Donald J. Trump storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s public calls for Mr. Pence to carry out Mr. Eastman’s plan raised expectations among his supporters that the vice president would do so — and ignited fury when he did not.Mr. Short, Mr. Pence’s chief of staff, had grown sufficiently concerned about the potential for Trump supporters to turn against the vice president that he alerted the Secret Service on Jan. 5.Mr. Pence continued to rebuff Mr. Trump even after a call from the president on the morning of Jan. 6 in which Mr. Trump called him a “wimp” and worse, according to testimony gathered by the committee.At 2:24 p.m. on Jan. 6, Mr. Trump sent out a tweet that said, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.”One Trump aide told the committee that it felt at the time like Mr. Trump was “pouring gasoline on the fire.” Immediately, the committee said, there was a noticeable surge in the crowds both inside and outside the Capitol, some of whom began to chant, “Hang Mike Pence!”Mr. Pence was evacuated from his ceremonial office in the Senate and taken to a secure location, barely escaping the angry mob that breached the building. When Mr. Aguilar told Mr. Jacob, who had been with Mr. Pence in the Capitol that day, that members of the crowd had been only 40 feet from them, he seemed unnerved.“I could hear the din of the rioters in the building while we moved,” Mr. Jacob said. “But I don’t think I was aware that they were as close as that.” More

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot has been trying to draw more eyes to its televised hearings by uploading clips of the proceedings online. But YouTube has removed one of those videos from its platform, saying the committee was advancing election misinformation.The excerpt, which was uploaded June 14, included recorded testimony from former Attorney General William P. Barr. But the problem for YouTube was that the video also included a clip of former President Donald J. Trump sharing lies about the election on the Fox Business channel.A screenshot of the committee’s website showing the video removal notification. The message initially said the video had been removed.Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol“We had glitches where they moved thousands of votes from my account to Biden’s account,” Mr. Trump said falsely, before suggesting the F.B.I. and Department of Justice may have been involved.The excerpt of the hearing did not include Mr. Barr’s perspective, stated numerous times elsewhere in the hearing, that Mr. Trump’s assertion that the election was stolen was wrong. The video initially was replaced with a black box stating that the clip had been removed for violating YouTube’s terms of service.“Our election integrity policy prohibits content advancing false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, if it does not provide sufficient context,” YouTube spokeswoman Ivy Choi said in a statement. “We enforce our policies equally for everyone, and have removed the video uploaded by the Jan. 6 committee channel.”The message on the video page has since been changed to “This video is private,” which may mean that YouTube would allow the committee to upload a version of the clip that makes clear that Trump’s claims are false. More

By trying to tame inflation, some commentators say, the Federal Reserve could bring about a recession — just as an unrepentant Donald Trump appears to be eyeing another White House bid.Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, made the understatement of the year on Wednesday when he noted offhandedly to reporters, “Clearly, people do not like inflation.”And how.According to Fox News’s latest national poll, 41 percent of registered voters said that “inflation and higher prices” represented the most important issue influencing their ballot decision in November. Just 12 percent of voters called guns their top priority, the second-place issue. Seventy-one percent disapproved of the job President Biden is doing on inflation.This is not exactly a vote of confidence in the federal government. In the past, this level of public dissatisfaction has typically led to major political upheaval.Inflation ran at a rate of 8.6 percent in May, the fastest annual pace in four decades. Voters do not seem to be buying the White House’s argument, backed up by the Fed and places like the World Bank, that global factors beyond Biden’s control like the pandemic, supply-chain crises and the war in Ukraine are driving the increase in prices.Nor do they seem to be giving the administration much credit for an unemployment rate that is down to 3.6 percent, just a tick above its prepandemic level.The Fed might be Biden’s best hope. After the Federal Open Market Committee announced on Wednesday that it would raise short-term interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point, Powell said the Fed’s goal was to bring inflation closer to its 2 percent target while keeping the labor market “strong.”He hastened to add: “We’re not trying to induce a recession now. Let’s be clear about that.”‘A democracy-wrecking election’Yet some commentators, notably David Frum of The Atlantic, have begun to fret that in trying to tame inflation, the Fed will do exactly that — start a recession, just in time to doom Biden or whomever Democrats nominate in his stead in 2024.Understand Inflation and How It Impacts YouInflation 101: What is inflation, why is it up and whom does it hurt? Our guide explains it all.Greedflation: Some experts contend that big corporations are supercharging inflation by jacking up prices. We take a closer look at the issue. Inflation Calculator: How you experience inflation can vary greatly depending on your spending habits. Answer these seven questions to estimate your personal inflation rate.For Investors: At last, interest rates for money market funds have started to rise. But inflation means that in real terms, you’re still losing money.Frum noted the historically tight link between economic growth and a president’s chances of re-election. Citing the possibility that an unrepentant Donald Trump will run again, he argued that a downturn this year or next could result in “a democracy-wrecking election the next year.”He concluded: “So the Federal Reserve has a more than usual obligation this week to measure its policy appropriately. A miscalculation in monetary policy in 2022 could reverberate through long ages of American history ahead.”Others have criticized Biden’s decision last fall to nominate Powell for a second term, leaving the president handcuffed in blaming the Fed chair for the parlous state of the economy. Powell was, after all, Trump’s pick for Fed chair — and Biden, the thinking goes, could have thrown him overboard and started afresh.That would have been a very Trump-like move. Powell resisted months of intense pressure from the 45th president to lower interest rates, including comments describing the low-key Fed chairman as an “enemy” of the United States. Central bankers prize their distance from politics, mindful that their credibility with financial institutions around the world is crucial to their effectiveness.So in renominating Powell, Biden made sure to emphasize his respect for his institutional prerogatives. “My plan is to address inflation,” the president said. “It starts with a simple proposition: Respect the Fed and respect the Fed’s independence.”Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, with President Biden last month. Some Democrats had urged Biden to choose a Fed chair of his own.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe Fed’s relationship with politicsLet’s set aside the fraught question of whether Trump’s re-election could bring about the end of American democracy. Does the Fed, in fact, have an “obligation” to consider how its actions might affect the U.S. political system?On a simple reading of the law, not really. The Federal Reserve Act gives the Fed the authority to regulate the nation’s money supply, to foster the “long-run potential” of the U.S. economy and to promote the goals of “maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates.”Frederic Mishkin, a former member of the Fed’s board of governors, no doubt spoke for many in the finance world when he wrote in an email, “I most strongly disagree with the view that the Federal Reserve should adjust its policy to favor or harm any politician.”He added, “The Fed should be as apolitical as possible, and its policy focus should be on stabilizing both inflation and output fluctuations, as is mandated by congressional legislation.”But it’s hard to divorce the Fed from its historical roots, founded as it was in an era of great political turmoil driven by frequent financial panics.The Fed was successfully established in 1913 because President Woodrow Wilson won the assent of William Jennings Bryan, the most influential populist leader of the time, by guaranteeing that government officials appointed by the president, not private sector bankers, would run the board.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More

Jennifer Medina, Reporting from Los Angeles.
June 15, 2022 More

In his testimony before the January 6 committee today, former US appellate court judge J Michael Luttig will warn that the plot to overturn the 2020 election was well-coordinated and threatened the nation’s very existence, according to his opening remarks obtained by CNN.Luttig is one of two guests in Thursday’s third hearing of the committee, which will focus on Trump’s pressure campaign against vice-president Mike Pence to get him to go along with his plans to stop Joe Biden from taking office.“The war on democracy instigated by the former president and his political party allies on January 6 was the natural and foreseeable culmination of the war for America,” Luttig warns in his opening remarks. “It was the final fateful day for the execution of a well-developed plan by the former president to overturn the 2020 presidential election at any cost, so that he could cling to power that the American People had decided to confer upon his successor, the next president of the United States instead.”“Had the Vice President of the United States obeyed the President of the United States, America would immediately have been plunged into what would have been tantamount to a revolution within a paralyzing constitutional crisis,” Luttig says.Conspiracies like the effort to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election win could tear the United States apart, former vice-president Mike Pence’s lawyer Greg Jacob will tell the January 6 committee today.“The law is not a plaything for presidents or judges to use to remake the world in their preferred image,” Jacob said in his opening remarks, which do not mention Donald Trump by name but are sharply critical of the idea that Pence could unilaterally decide an election — an idea the former president promoted.“Our Constitution and our laws form the strong edifice within which our heartfelt policy disagreements are to be debated and decided. When our elected and appointed leaders break, twist, and fail to enforce our laws in order to achieve their partisan ends, or to accomplish frustrated policy objectives they consider existentially important, they are breaking America,” Jacob said.You can read the full remarks below:READ: The full statement from Pence counsel Greg Jacob to the select committee. 1/3 pic.twitter.com/2smpKVxDhk— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) June 16, 2022
Page 2 of 3 pic.twitter.com/TfQKr7sdlm— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) June 16, 2022
Page 3 of 3 pic.twitter.com/KzpxylqbUK— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) June 16, 2022
Eric Berger reports on another factor that led to the United States’s disastrous experience with Covid-19: its lack of a universal health care system:The US could have saved more than 338,000 lives and more than $105bn in healthcare costs in the Covid-19 pandemic with a universal healthcare system, according to a study.More than 1 million people died in the US from Covid, in part because the country’s “fragmented and inefficient healthcare system” meant uninsured or underinsured people faced financial barriers that delayed diagnosis and exacerbated transmission, the report states.The US had the highest death rate from the virus among large wealthy countries and is also the only one among such countries without universal healthcare. It spends almost twice as much on healthcare per capita as the other wealthy countries, according to Kaiser Family Foundation data.US could have saved 338,000 lives from Covid with universal healthcare, study findsRead moreThe House subcommittee investigating the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic announced that Deborah Birx, the former president’s Covid-19 coordinator, will testify publicly next week.For the first time, former White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx will publicly testify about her role in the Trump Administration’s #COVID19 response.Tune in next week, June 23, at 10AM ET.https://t.co/aOsMX29Q1b— Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis (@COVIDOversight) June 16, 2022
Birx was among the public health officials who became household names during the pandemic’s worst months, but later fell out of favor with Trump. Last October, the Democratic chair of the subcommittee Jame Clyburn said its interviews with Birx “confirm that President Trump’s prioritization of politics, contempt for science, and refusal to follow the advice of public health experts undermined the nation’s ability to respond effectively to the coronavirus crisis.”The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell explain why the January 6 committee has opted to make today’s hearing about the actions of Mike Pence, who played a major role in torpedoing Trump’s plan to stop Biden from taking office:The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack intends to outline at its third hearing on Thursday how Donald Trump corruptly pressured then vice-president Mike Pence to reject the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election and directly contributed to the insurrection.The panel will first examine the genesis of Trump’s pressure campaign on Pence to adopt an unconstitutional and unlawful plan to reject certified electors from certain states at the congressional certification in an attempt to give Trump a second presidential term.The select committee then intends to show how that theory – advanced by external Trump legal adviser John Eastman – was rejected by Pence, his lawyers and the White House counsel’s office, who universally told the former president that the entire scheme was unlawful.Third panel hearing will show Trump’s pressure on Pence to overturn electionRead moreIn his testimony before the January 6 committee today, former US appellate court judge J Michael Luttig will warn that the plot to overturn the 2020 election was well-coordinated and threatened the nation’s very existence, according to his opening remarks obtained by CNN.Luttig is one of two guests in Thursday’s third hearing of the committee, which will focus on Trump’s pressure campaign against vice-president Mike Pence to get him to go along with his plans to stop Joe Biden from taking office.“The war on democracy instigated by the former president and his political party allies on January 6 was the natural and foreseeable culmination of the war for America,” Luttig warns in his opening remarks. “It was the final fateful day for the execution of a well-developed plan by the former president to overturn the 2020 presidential election at any cost, so that he could cling to power that the American People had decided to confer upon his successor, the next president of the United States instead.”“Had the Vice President of the United States obeyed the President of the United States, America would immediately have been plunged into what would have been tantamount to a revolution within a paralyzing constitutional crisis,” Luttig says.The Washington Post report further detailing Ginni Thomas’s involvement in the effort to stop Joe Biden from taking office underscores just how much evidence the January 6 committee is accumulating in its effort to unravel what happened that day.It’s not clear if the lawmakers will opt to publicly explore what they’ve learned about conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas’s wife in the course of their investigation, but they must surely feel tempted. Thomas was the only one of the court’s nine members who dissented from a January ruling ordering the release of records from the Trump administration to the committee.The revelations about Ginni Thomas come as tensions around the court are as high as ever. Its conservative majority is widely believed to be poised to strike down the nationwide right to an abortion, and a draft opinion of the decision was leaked last month, sparking uproar. Other decisions expected in the coming days or weeks could expand the right to carry a concealed weapon, weaken the government’s ability to regulate and upend the Biden administration’s effort to end the “remain in Mexico” policy Trump implemented to stop border crossings.Trump is out of office but the court’s rightward swing is one of his legacies. Had he not won in 2016, it’s possible the institution’s ideological makeup may look quite different.Good morning, US politics blog readers! Today’s marquee event in Washington will be the third hearing of the January 6 committee, which is to center on the pressure campaign around Mike Pence, the vice-president to Donald Trump. The Washington Post is reporting that the committee is also considering what to do with new evidence that shows Ginni Thomas, wife of conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, was talking to a lawyer for Trump, who played a major role in trying to stop Joe Biden from taking office.Here’s what else is happening today:
Anthony Fauci is positive for Covid but that’s apparently not stopping him from testifying before the Senate health committee, though he will undoubtedly not be in the room.
Biden will sign a bill to overhaul regulations on ocean shipping that he hopes will help lower the US’s high rate of inflation.
Republicans are kicking off their “Road to Majority” conference hosted by the Faith & Freedom Coalition, which is accurately named: the party is viewed as having a good chance of taking back one or both houses of Congress in the November midterm elections.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives may be closer to getting a director after the Senate Judiciary Committee votes on confirming Steven Dettelbach. More

Proud Boys developed plans to take over government buildings in Washington DCDocument reveals plans for entering buildings and blocking traffic to prevent law enforcement access A document revealed in court on Wednesday has exposed a detailed plan by the Proud Boys to occupy government buildings in Washington DC, including the supreme court.The document, titled “1776 Returns”, laid out the plans for which buildings to target, the number of members required for each building, and tactics, including instructions to use the pandemic as an excuse for wearing masks and face shields without raising suspicion.It called for at least 50 members of the group to invade each building “or it’s a no go for that building”.​​“These are OUR building, they are just renting space,” read a part of the document, according to NBC. “We must show our politicians We the People are in charge.”Five members of the far-right Proud Boys, including leader Enrique Tarrio, were charged earlier this month with “seditious conspiracy”. Tarrio was slapped with the charge on top of already existing charges against him for, among other things, obstruction of an official proceeding and assaulting officers. Other charges include a felony charge against Louis Enrique Colon, who pleaded guilty in April.The document was submitted to court by the lawyer of a Proud Boys member, Zachary Rehl, while filing for a motion for his release from pre-trial detention.Rehl’s lawyer claimed, in an attempt to distance his client from allegations that he had a leadership role in the insurrection, that Rehl had no idea about the document.The detailed nine-page memo has directions for participants to “use Covid to your advantage” and to create a “fake appointment” for one member, identified as “Covert Sleeper”, to get inside the building and eventually let the others in.The “Sleeper” was tasked to spend the day as an “insider”.The plan also called on participants to create distractions for the guards by “causing trouble” at the gate.Another part directed participants to block traffic from as many angles as possible.“Traffic blocks have network effects,” read the document. “The Rerouting traffic will block other important areas, and also stop access to any law enforcement vehicle.”The buildings they targeted are the supreme court, three Senate office buildings, and three House office buildings. Another target is listed as “CNN”, possibly referring to the CNN office in Washington, which is about a six-minute drive from the Capitol.The demands made in the document called for a new election on 20 January, the day of President Biden’s inauguration, with requirements such as paper ballots only, no electronic or mail-in votes, and the use of national guards for monitoring.TopicsUS Capitol attackThe far rightWashington DCnewsReuse this content More