US Politics

The wife of Bill Ackman, the hedge fund billionaire who accused Claudine Gay of being a plagiarist and led calls for her resignation as Harvard president, is now facing allegations of plagiarism herself.Neri Oxman, a prominent former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has apologized after Business Insider identified multiple instances in which she lifted passages from other scholars’ work without proper attribution in her 2010 dissertation. She also pledged to review the primary sources and request the necessary corrections.Business Insider on Thursday initially labeled four passages of Oxman’s dissertation as plagiarized – without any attribution – from Wikipedia entries. But by Friday, the outlet had found at least 15 such passages, a turn of events that was similar to that which led to Gay’s ouster from the Harvard presidency.Business Insider also identified research papers written by Oxman that contained plagiarism, including a 2007 paper – titled Get Real: Towards Performance Driven Computational Geometry – and a 2011 paper named Variable Property Rapid Prototyping.The 2011 paper contained more than 100 words lifted from a book without any attribution or citation, included two sentences from another book verbatim without any attribution, and pulled material from a 2004 paper without citing it, according to Business Insider.In response to Gay’s resignation, Ackman published a 4,000-word post on X – formerly Twitter – in which he criticized diversity, equity and inclusion efforts as well as complained about “racism against white people”. He also complained that Gay, a Black woman, was allowed to remain on Harvard’s faculty. Gay had faced plagiarism allegations over her 1997 dissertation, but she requested corrections and was cleared of academic misconduct by a three-member independent review board.Ackman struck a different tone on X when addressing the plagiarism allegations against his wife. He wrote on X: “It is unfortunate that my actions to address problems in higher education have led to these attacks on my family. This experience has inspired me to save all news organizations from the trouble of doing plagiarism reviews.”He went on to promise to lead plagiarism reviews against all current MIT faculty, board and committee members, and its president, Sally Kornbluth.Ackman additionally criticized Business Insider and the reporters at the publication who authored the story investigating Oxman, saying he would spearhead plagiarism reviews against the outlet’s staff.Previously, Ackman was a donor to the Democratic party. But the New York Times reported that the billionaire’s campaign against Harvard came because he resented the fact that years’ worth of donations to the university did not yield him more influence there.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionConservatives have seized upon and supported Ackman’s complaints about Harvard.Meanwhile, Oxman has also been criticized for accepting a $125,000 gift from the late Jeffrey Epstein, the notorious sex trafficker and disgraced financier. Oxman responded to the donation by sending an art gift to Epstein.Oxman was a tenured faculty member at MIT before leaving the school and moving to New York City in 2020. Some consider her a celebrity in the field of architecture and design, and her new company – named Oxman – was in the middle of a soft launch when she issued her apology in response to Business Insider’s reporting. More

Donald Trump told an audience at a campaign event on Friday in Iowa to “get over” a deadly shooting at a high school in the state a day earlier.After offering sympathy and emotional support for the victims of the shooting in Perry, Iowa, and their families, Trump said at the event in Sioux Center: “It’s just horrible – so surprising to see it here. But we have to get over it. We have to move forward.”Trump’s comments on the shooting that occurred about 36 hours earlier were the first he had made addressing the violence.Friday’s remarks were not the first time in the last year that Trump has apparently tried to deflect from having a substantial conversation about gun violence in the US. During a speech in April 2023 to the National Rifle Association, Trump argued that the long history of deadly school shootings in the US is “not a gun problem”. He instead blamed the issue on Democrats, mental health issues, marijuana and the transgender community.Trump’s recent comment on the Perry shooting was criticized by the Democratic Super Pac American Bridge.“We knew Trump lacked empathy for others, but no one thought he could go this low and tell Iowans to simply ‘get over it’ as they grieve from a situation communities across the country know all too well,” American Bridge presidential campaigns communication director Brandon Weathersby said in a statement on Trump’s comments. “This is beyond the pale, even for Trump.”Trump has made several campaign stops in Iowa ahead of the Republican presidential primary caucuses on 15 January. He is seeking a second presidency despite facing 91 criminal charges for trying to subvert his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election, illegally retaining government secrets after he left the Oval Office and illicit hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, who has reported having a sexual encounter with Trump during an earlier time in his marriage to Melania Trump.The former president has also grappled with civil litigation over his business practices and a rape allegation deemed “substantially true” by a judge.Nonetheless, Trump dominates polling for the Republican presidential nomination this year.The shooting in Perry killed one sixth grader and wounded seven others. Police identified the shooter as a 17-year-old student who attended high school at the targeted campus. The teen attacker died from a self-inflicted bullet wound, police said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPolice said they found an improvised explosive device during a search of the school while responding to the shooting.Four of the wounded were students, two were faculty and one was the principal, who was reported to be in critical condition but – like the remaining victims – did not appear to be facing life-threatening injuries.The shooting occurred shortly before classes started on the first day of school after the students’ holiday break. More

Shortly after taking office in January, Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders launched a powerful salvo in the so-called war on woke being waged by Republicans.Sanders, 41, signed an executive order targeting critical race theory, an academic field that probes how racism affects US society and laws. The move aligned with countrywide Republican opposition to the discipline.“Our job is to protect the students, and we’re going to take steps every single day to make sure we do exactly that,” Sanders said in a statement. “And that’s the reason I signed the executive order. I’m proud of the fact that we’re taking those steps and we’re going to continue to do it every single day that I’m in office.”Sanders also barred the use in state of documents of “Latinx”, which an expert described as a “gender-neutral term to describe US residents of Latin American descent”.Days after this slew of executive orders, Sanders also delivered the Republican address responding to Joe Biden’s State of the Union, during which she evoked immigrants, liberals and others held up as boogeymen by her former boss Donald Trump during his presidency.“From out-of-control inflation and violent crime to the dangerous border crisis and threat from China, Biden and the Democrats have failed you,” Sanders proclaimed, later warning: “The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left. The choice is between normal or crazy.”Sanders’s fight, however, didn’t end during her first weeks in office. Far from it, in an October executive order meant “to eliminate woke, anti-women words from state government and respect women”, Sanders prohibited phrases such as “pregnant people” and “chestfeeding” from being used in “official state government business”.That Sanders was even in a position to mount such a comprehensive assault on certain progressive initiative might have come as a shock to some political observers. Sanders had worked as Trump’s press secretary, and other acolytes of the former president fared poorly after he left the White House.But to those familiar with Arkansas politics, and to Sanders herself, her ascent did not come as a surprise. Nor did she simply luck out on account of her father, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. Rather, they say that Sanders is an immensely skilled communicator and politician with a deep understanding of speaking to voters’ wants and needs.“Mike Huckabee had been governor for much of the 1990s and early 2000s, and had been very successful,” said Andrew Dowdle, a professor of political science at the University of Arkansas. “She had spent some time working with his campaign and so, to some degree, that kind of ends up giving her roots here that other candidates might not have had.”While other states didn’t immediately jump to elect Trump associates, Sanders’s bona fides with the former president seemed to play well with the Arkansas electorate. “Statewide, Donald Trump was very popular as well, so that ended up giving her a little bit of a political boost,” Dowdle said.And though Arkansas didn’t have much in the way of far-right leanings, Sanders has been able to appeal to a wide range of Republicans. Sanders “bridges those two camps – but at the same time, she does end up really being viewed by the more populist wing as one of theirs”.Hal Bass, a professor emeritus of political science who taught Sanders’ at her alma mater, Ouachita Baptist University, said: “She was a natural – I think kind of born and bred in the sense.”Bass added that Sanders “very much grew up in the political area”. He also said she showed great promise as a student and campus leader. A double-major in political science and communications, Sanders took several classes with Bass and worked in his office.He also sponsored the student government organization in which she was active.“Ouachita is a small college, small campus, so you would see her out and about over the course of her time here,” Bass said. “She was intelligent, she was articulate, she was fun – she was very much a popular student.”When Sanders worked in his office, peers would just drop by to visit and speak with her. Her organizational skills were clear in how she ran student meetings.When it came time for class, she was a key player in class discussions and wrote excellent exams. “I wasn’t at all surprised to see her pursue a career in politics out of college,” Bass said.As for Sanders’s success despite other Trump-linked candidates’ struggles, Bass said: “I certainly think she has an identity in Arkansas that is more than simply an extension of Donald Trump.” He pointed to her father’s popularity as governor as fomenting that identity.“It gave her name identification, [and] it also gave her goodwill,” Bass said. “I think it is certainly more difficult now to … distinguish her from the Trump era than it was at the beginning of her political rise.“But in terms of developing a political identity, a political persona, I think those foundations were laid before” the 2016 presidential election won by Trump.Margaret Scranton, a political science professor at University of Arkansas at Little Rock, also pointed to how Sanders’s father taught her lots about governance.“She grew up in a governor’s mansion, and so she saw firsthand how a lot of things work – whether it’s having state troopers and security, or managing the press,” Scranton said. “Having a family who understands state and national politics gives you a set of sounding boards that the average person who did not grow up in a governor’s mansion wouldn’t have.”Scranton, whose academic interest in executive leadership focuses on communications, said: “She really is a phenomenal communicator.” Scranton pointed to Sanders’s response to Biden’s State of the Union.“If I just read the transcript, I would see a very Trumpian set of themes that look like ‘American carnage’ – whether it’s the border or immigration or fentanyl, unemployment, a landscape of disaster after disaster,” Scranton said.“Watching her deliver, her tone is more gentle. Her rhetoric is not as stark. She’s saying similar things but in a much more approachable kind of language.”The professor said: “She draws you in, her body language, her face. Occasionally she’ll kind of smile, and there will be a twinkle in her eyes.”Asked if Sanders might have higher political ambitions, Scranton said “absolutely”.Yet whether Sanders can one day be a credible candidate for the Oval Office once occupied by her ex-boss will depend on her performance in office.She endured several first-year foibles, among them outcry over her efforts to restrict public records access and a lectern that cost $19,000. It remains to be seen whether those can hurt her governorship overall.Still, Sanders’s youth and success make her a viable option for those conservatives who say they are ready for new Republican party standard bearers.“One of her themes is, ‘It’s time for a new generation of leaders in the Republican party,’” Scranton said. “There’s a huge opportunity there.” More

Dissent inside the Biden administration over the president’s Gaza policy is growing, with a public resignation this week of a Department of Education official, and a letter signed by more than a dozen Biden campaign staffers calling for a ceasefire and the conditioning of aid to Israel.“It’s pretty extraordinary levels of dissent,” said Josh Paul, a career official working on arms sales at the state department who resigned in protest in October, of the mounting signs of discontent. “I am hearing in recent weeks from people who are thinking more seriously about resigning.”Tariq Habash, the Department of Education official, also says that he has heard from many more officials than he had anticipated who are contemplating their own exits. “It speaks to the continued shift and concerns about our current policies,” he said. “I hope it resonates with the president and the people who are making policy decisions on this issue that is affecting millions of lives.”Habash, who is Palestinian American, is the first political appointee from the Biden administration to bring his resignation to the media and publish an open letter. “I cannot stay silent as this administration turns a blind eye to the atrocities committed against innocent Palestinian lives,” he wrote in announcing his resignation from his position as adviser to its policy planning office. In the letter, he objected to the president not pressuring Israel “to halt the abusive and ongoing collective punishment tactics” that have led to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. He also took issue with administration leaders’ repetition of “unverified claims that systemically dehumanize Palestinians”.A day before Habash quit, 17 current campaign staffers anonymously called for a ceasefire and conditioning military aid to Israel. Their letter urged Biden to take “concrete steps to end the conditions of apartheid, occupation, and ethnic cleansing that are the root causes of this conflict”. An organizer of the letter, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “We know we’re not alone in this, and there is a very big coalition asking for the same thing.”These are just the latest internal criticisms of Biden. Last month, a group of administration officials hid their faces with masks and scarves and staged a vigil in front of the White House in support of a ceasefire. More than 500 alumni of Biden’s presidential campaign signed an open letter calling for a ceasefire in November, and congressional aides and USAid employees sent their own petitions this fall. Current state department officials who do not want to risk their jobs by speaking out have increasingly taken advantage of sanctioned routes to criticizing the president, by filing dissent memos to the secretary of state.The Guardian spoke to several current political appointees and career staffers from the state department who are critical of the administration’s approach but declined to speak on the record. Some say they are trying to create change from within. Others say that the president’s entire Middle East approach is being guided by the White House and in many sense the president himself, defying the recommendations of policy experts.Of Habash’s resignation, the White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said that “people have the right to voice their opinion”. She and the state department directed questions to the Department of Education, whose spokesperson wished Habash the “best in his future endeavors”.Biden’s advisers sought to diffuse internal dissatisfaction with a series of listening sessions at the White House and the state department in October and November. “It’s a sign of strength that an administration not only hears but welcomes dissent from within,” said Emily Horne, a former spokesperson for the Biden White House.Since the first days after Hamas’s 7 October attacks, the administration has shifted some of its rhetoric. Biden is now talking more about the humanitarian catastrophe than he was during the initial days of Israel’s ground incursion into Gaza and has repeatedly urged Israel to take steps to protect civilians. But the acute situation in Gaza caused by Israel’s ongoing operations, which have killed more than 22,000 Palestinians, along with risks of famine and severely restricted medical care, have overshadowed any purported shifts in US policy.This week, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will travel to the Middle East “to underscore the importance of protecting civilian lives in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza”. The state department criticized statements from Israeli ministers who have called for the relocation of Palestinians from Gaza. But even that condemnation came just days after the secretary of state bypassed Congress to rush arms to Israel.“There is a feeling among Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in government that the administration does’t take their opinions or dissent seriously,” said Jasmine El-Gamal, a former civil servant who worked on Middle East policy at the Department of Defense during the Obama years.Paul, the senior state department career official who resigned in protest in October, said he’s in contact with several people currently in government who are thinking about leaving over Biden’s handling of Israel. “If there was universal healthcare, there would be more people willing to resign,” he said, in reference to many government employees’ reliance on their jobs for medical care.Habash’s resignation, coupled with the 3 January letter from current campaign staff, comes amid fears that Biden could be losing important members of his base as the 2024 presidential election begins in earnest. Even former Obama administration officials now hosting popular podcasts like Pod Save America have become vocally critical of Biden. The campaigners’ letter said that re-election campaign “volunteers quit in droves, and people who have voted blue for decades feel uncertain about doing so for the first time ever, because of this conflict”.For now, the dissent does not seem to be affecting Biden’s approach or that of the close-knit circle of advisers around him. A former official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, downplayed the resignations and open letters. “Some of these criticisms resonate, but I don’t see them actually making a significant difference,” they said. “The times when it matters to this administration is when it starts to play into domestic politics and becomes a concern for the next election.”Habash says he remains aligned with much of Biden’s domestic policies, and hopes his departure pushes the president to change course on Gaza. “Our elected officials are not in touch with their base and their voters,” he warned. More

A retiring US House Republican who has previously opposed proposals to raise the federal minimum wage has advocated for an increase to the $174,000 salaries collected by rank and file Congress members, saying that would motivate “credible people to run for office”.“Most of us don’t have wealth,” North Carolina’s Patrick McHenry said to the Dispatch in an interview.Apparently alluding to higher salaries collected by figures such as the US president and the supreme court’s justices, he added: “You can’t have the executive branch and the judicial branch on a higher pay scale than Congress. That is absurd and really stupid for Congress to disadvantage themselves in this game of checks and balances.”Perhaps unsurprisingly, McHenry’s remarks prompted mixed reactions.Though some maintained it was logical for higher salaries to potentially draw higher quality House candidates, others have pointed out that McHenry’s stance was hypocritical, given his previous vote against raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15.“Retiring Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry wants a higher salary for his buddies in Congress but voted against raising the federal minimum wage,” podcaster Brittany Page wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “If you feel your salary hasn’t kept up with inflation, imagine how poor and working-class Americans feel, sweetie.”McHenry in 2007 also spoke out against raising the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25, dismissing it as “a very nice” but impractical idea that would make it difficult for “the physically, emotionally and mentally handicapped” to land jobs.“What the Democrat majority wants to do … is use other people’s money to pay other people,” McHenry said at the time, when his party was the minority in the House. “Well, that is a very nice thing to do, a nice offer, a very nice thing, to write a check for somebody else.”But, McHenry insisted then, “it is just empty rhetoric and crazy talk”.McHenry, 48, served as the interim House speaker briefly after Kevin McCarthy’s historic ouster from that role in October. He handed the gavel over to his fellow Republican Mike Johnson after the House elected the Louisiana representative as McCarthy’s successor. And in December, McHenry announced he would be retiring at the end of his term in early 2025, which would mark his 20th year in the House.As other lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle have done, McHenry on Wednesday exalted the virtues of implementing pay raises for Congress members and their staffers. But while some have suggested that higher government pay would limit corruption and make officials more responsive to voters, McHenry simply argued that skill and competence cost money.“Most of us live on the salary,” McHenry said to the Dispatch, referring to Congress members who maintain a home in their district as well as another in the nation’s capital. “And then, you know, the very wealthy few end up dominating the news because of their personal stock trades when most of us don’t have wealth.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“You especially need the staff to be able to go toe-to-toe with the people they’re regulating or overseeing in the executive branch, which means you need to get the highest quality folks.”But most Americans disfavor hiking pay for Congress, which hasn’t gotten a raise since 2009, as Business Insider reported, citing a poll conducted by the outlet in March.Notably, an individual salary of $174,000 is still substantially more than the US median household income in 2022, which was $74,580, according to US Census figures. Congress members also have access to medical benefits that most in the public do not, among other perks.Some took to public platforms as McHenry’s comments circulated and expressed little sympathy for his perceived lack of adequate compensation, including one who wrote that “the average income in the US in 2023” was tens of thousands of dollars lower.“Maybe he should try living on that instead,” the commenter said of McHenry. More

Three years ago this week, the United States Capitol was attacked by thousands of armed loyalists of Donald Trump, some intent on killing members of Congress.Roughly 140 police officers were injured in the attack. Four people died. Capitol police officer Brian D Sicknick, who participated in the response, passed away the following day. Another Capitol police officer and a Washington DC police officer who also responded to the attack have since died by suicide.January 6, 2021, will be remembered as one of the most shameful days in US history. Yet three years later, Americans remain confused and divided about the significance of what occurred.Let me offer five basic truths:The events of January 6 capped two months during which Donald Trump sought to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election.In the wake of the election, Trump repeatedly asserted that he had won and Biden had lost, without any basis in fact or law. Sixty federal courts as well as Trump’s own Departments of Justice and Homeland Security concluded that there was no evidence of substantial fraud.Trump summoned to the White House Republican lawmakers from Pennsylvania and Michigan to inquire about how they might alter the election results.He called two local canvassing board officials in Wayne county, Michigan, that state’s most populous county and one that overwhelmingly favored Biden.He phoned Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes”, according to a recording of that conversation, adding that “the people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”He alluded that Georgia’s secretary of state would face criminal prosecution if he did not do as Trump told him: “You know what they did and you’re not reporting it. You know, that’s a criminal – that’s a criminal offense. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”He pressed the acting US attorney general and deputy attorney general to declare the election fraudulent.When the deputy said the department had found no evidence of widespread fraud and warned that it had no power to change the outcome of the election, Trump replied: “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me.”Trump and his allies continued to harangue the attorney general and top justice department officials nearly every day until January 6.Trump plotted with an assistant attorney general to oust the acting attorney general and pressure lawmakers in Georgia to overturn the state’s election results. Trump ultimately decided against it after top department leaders pledged to resign en masse.Trump then incited the attack on the Capitol.For weeks before the attack, Trump urged his supporters to come to Washington for a Save America protest on January 6, when Congress was scheduled to ceremonially count the electoral votes of Joe Biden’s win.He tweeted on December 19: “Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” On December 26: “See you in Washington, DC, on January 6th. Don’t miss it. Information to follow.”On December 30: “JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!” On January 1: “The BIG Protest Rally in Washington, DC will take place at 11:00 A.M. on January 6th. Locational details to follow. StopTheSteal!”At a rally he held just before the violence began, Trump repeated his lies about how the election had been stolen. “We will never give up,” he said. “We will never concede. It will never happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it any more.”He told the crowd that Republicans were fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back, overly respectful of “bad people”.Instead, he said, Republicans are “going to have to fight much harder … We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong … We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.”He then told the crowd that “different rules” applied to them.“When you catch somebody in a fraud, you are allowed to go by very different rules. So I hope Mike [Pence] has the courage to do what he has to do, and I hope he doesn’t listen to the Rinos [Republicans in name only] and the stupid people that he’s listening to.”Then – knowing that members of the crowd were armed – he dispatched them to the Capitol as the electoral count was about to start. The attack on the Capitol came immediately after.He watched the attack on television from the White House. For three hours, he made no attempt to stop it or ask his supporters to refrain from violence.Trump’s attempted coup continues to this day.Trump still refuses to concede the 2020 election. He continues to assert it was stolen.He has presided over a network of loyalists and allies who sought to overturn the election and erode public confidence in it by mounting partisan state “audits” and escalating attacks on state election officials.A year later, on 6 January 2022, Trump hosted a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. “Remember,” he said, “the insurrection took place on November 3rd. It was the completely unarmed protest of the rigged election that took place on January 6th.” (Reminder: some were, in fact, armed.)Trump then referred to the House investigation of the attack on the Capitol: “Why isn’t the Unselect Committee of highly partisan political hacks investigating the CAUSE of the January 6th protest, which was the rigged Presidential Election of 2020?”He went on to castigate “Rinos”, presumably referring to his opponents within the party, such as Republican representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who sat on the January 6 committee. “In many ways a Rino is worse than a Radical Left Democrat,” Trump said, “because you don’t know where they are coming from and you have no idea how bad they really are for our Country.” He added: “the good news is there are fewer and fewer Rinos left as we elect strong Patriots who love America.”Trump then led a purge of congressional Republicans who had failed to support him. He endorsed a primary challenger to Cheney, who lost her re-election bid in Wyoming. Kinzinger left Congress.Trump is now running for president again, with a wide lead over other Republican candidates for the nomination.During his campaign, he has called January 6, 2021, “a beautiful day” and described those imprisoned for the insurrection as “great, great patriots” and “hostages”. At his campaign rallies he has played a recording of The Star-Spangled Banner sung by jailed rioters, accompanied by his recitation of the pledge of allegiance.On Saturday, Trump will spend the third anniversary of the January 6 attack at two rallies in Iowa.Trump has still not been held accountable.Trump’s post-riot impeachment was rejected by Republican senators, including the Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, who claimed there were better ways to hold him accountable than impeaching him.Although the House January 6 committee had no direct power to hold Trump accountable, its revelations did affect the 2022 midterms, where many Republican candidates who had supported Trump’s lies were defeated. It also laid a foundation for the justice department to indict Trump.The Republican presidential primaries have not held Trump accountable. To the contrary, the justice department’s indictment and a similar indictment in Georgia have apparently strengthened Trump’s grip on the nomination, as he uses them as evidence that he’s being persecuted.The Colorado supreme court and Maine’s secretary of state have determined that Trump should not be on their state ballots because of section 3 of the 14th amendment to the constitution, which bars someone who has previously sworn allegiance to the constitution but then engaged in an insurrection from holding public office. Trump has appealed the decisions.Trump maintains a demagogic hold over the Republican partyA belligerent and narcissistic authoritarian has gained a powerful hold over a large portion of the US, including the Republican party.According to recent polls, 70% of Republican voters believe his lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Thirty-four per cent of Republicans believe the FBI organized and encouraged the insurrection (compared with 30% of independents and 13% of Democrats).The Republican party is close to becoming a cult whose central animating idea is that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.Trump has had help, of course. Fox News hosts and social media groups have promoted and amplified his ravings for their own purposes. The vast majority of Republicans in Congress and in the states have played along.The 2024 election will be the final and probably last opportunity to hold Trump accountable for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including his attempted coup three years ago today.The 2024 election may therefore be the last chance for American democracy to function.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

In the three years to the day since the insurrection at the US Capitol, great strides have been made in shoring up American democracy: hundreds of rioters have been prosecuted, legislation has been passed to bolster electoral safeguards and Donald Trump has been charged over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election.But as the country marks the third anniversary of one of its darkest days in modern times, a pall hangs in the air. It comes from Trump himself and his promise, growing steadily louder as the 2024 presidential election approaches, that if he wins he will pardon those convicted of acts of violence, obstructing Congress and seditious conspiracy on 6 January 2021.The scope of Trump’s pardon pledge is astonishing both for its quantity and quality. The former president has made clear that – should he be confirmed as the Republican presidential candidate and go on to triumph in the November election – he would contemplate pardoning every one of those prosecuted for their participation in the insurrection.Last May he reposted on his Truth Social platform the slogan: “Free all J-6 political prisoners”. A few months earlier he told a rightwing website that “we’ll be looking very, very seriously at full pardons”.A total or near-total pardon would encompass hundreds of cases. The US Department of Justice has conducted what it describes as the largest investigation in its history following the storming of the Capitol building and has so far secured almost 900 convictions either at trial or through guilty pleas.About 350 cases are still ongoing.Then there is the quality. Trump has specifically threatened to pardon Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the extremist group the Proud Boys who with 22 years in prison has received the longest sentence yet handed down for the insurrection.Tarrio was found guilty of seditious conspiracy. Though he was not present in the Capitol compound on 6 January 2021, prosecutors presented evidence that he had helped coordinate the storming of the building and on the day itself had sent encouraging messages on social media.The judge at his sentencing, Timothy Kelly, said he was sending a strong message: “It can’t happen again,” he said.In September Trump told NBC News that he would “certainly look at” pardoning Tarrio. “He and other people have been treated horribly … They’ve been persecuted.”Jamie Raskin, the Democratic congressman from Maryland, said that Trump’s pledge to pardon rioters showed that “January 6 never ended. Today is January 6.”Speaking at an event on Friday organised by End Citizens United and Let America Vote in advance of the third anniversary, Raskin, who was present at the Capitol as the riot unfolded and who went on to lead the second impeachment of Trump following the upheaval, lamented how the former president wanted to set convicted criminals free. “Trump is out there saying he’s going to pardon people who engaged in political violence, who bloodied and wounded and hospitalized 150 of our officers.”Raskin added that Trump’s threat should be taken seriously. “We better believe him. I mean, he pardoned Roger Stone, a political criminal; he pardoned Michael Flynn, his disgraced former national security adviser,” he said. “Now he wants to pardon the shock troops of January 6, so he will have this roving band of people willing to commit political violence and insurrection for him – how dangerous is that?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs NPR has noted, anyone pardoned by Trump for felonies arising from 6 January 2021 would be entitled to legally own guns once more.Trump’s statements on possible pardons are in keeping with the general stance towards the insurrection he has expressed over the past three years. He has repeatedly described the attack as a “beautiful day” and those who took part in it as “great, great patriots” who since their arrests have become “hostages”.At his rallies, he has boomed through loudspeakers a recording of jailed January 6 rioters singing The Star-Spangled Banner.There are alarming indications that for a sizable portion of the US electorate, his whitewashing of that fateful day appears to be working. A poll from the Washington Post and the University of Maryland this week found that a quarter of all Americans think the FBI was probably or definitely behind the US Capitol assault – a figure rising to more than a third of Republicans.Biden has indicated that he will make January 6, and Trump’s response to it over the past three years, a key aspect of his re-election bid. The president put the threat posed to democracy by Trump at the centre of his first major speech of the 2024 election year.Biden’s address was delivered on Friday afternoon pointedly in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. That is where George Washington and the continental army were headquartered during the American revolution.A new advert released by the Biden campaign this week replays video footage of the storming of the Capitol three years ago. Biden is heard saying: “There is something dangerous happening in America. There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy.” More

This time it’s personal. On Friday Joe Biden tore into his predecessor Donald Trump as never before. He brimmed with anger, disdain and contempt. He apparently had to stop himself from swearing. So much for “when they go low, we go high” – and plenty of Democrats will be just fine with that.If Biden was seeking to jolt his half-conscious 2024 re-election campaign into life, this may have done the trick. The palpable loathing of Trump took a good 10 or 20 years off him. Keep hating like this and he might do a Benjamin Button all the way to election day.There is no better illustration of Biden’s evolution than a speech he delivered on the first anniversary of the January 6 insurrection. On that occasion, he denounced a “web of lies” but never mentioned Trump by name, preferring to cite the “former president”. Those were still the days when he would talk about “the former guy” and get a laugh.Two years on, in an address near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, Biden spoke the name “Trump” more than 40 times in less than an hour as he warned that his likely 2024 opponent would sacrifice American democracy to put himself in power. The 81-year-old president generally seems like a grandfatherly figure predisposed to give people the benefit of the doubt, which makes his detestation of Trump all the more striking.Trump’s failure to act as a violent mob stormed the US Capitol, despite the pleas of staff and family members, was “among the worst derelictions of duty by a president in American history”, Biden said, noting that Trump went on to lose 60 court cases that took him back to the truth “that I had won the election and he was a loser”.It was a jab to the ribs, since Trump hates nothing more than being branded a “loser”.The president went on to recall how Trump has called the insurrectionists “patriots” and claimed there was a “lot of love” on January 6. At that, Biden shook his head, blinked and let out a gasp of disbelief, as if stunned anew by the assertion. “The rest of the nation, including law enforcement, saw a lot of hate and violence,” he said.Biden furiously denounced political violence and Trump’s habit of joking about the big lie-influenced intruder who attacked Paul Pelosi, the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, with a hammer, saying: “And he thinks that’s funny. He laughed about it. What a sick – ”He halted. At the last moment, the president of the United States had saved himself from uttering a profanity. The urge coursed through his body and found relief in his hands, which clenched into fists, as the crowd filled in with laughter and whooping. “My God,” Biden said. “I think it’s despicable, seriously, not just for a president but for any person to say that.”Against a backdrop of 11 American flags and four faux Roman columns, Biden went on: “The guy who claims law and order sows lawlessness and disorder.” Trump is planning a full-scale campaign of revenge and retribution, he said, and promised to be a dictator on day one.Trump has threatened to terminate the US constitution, impose the death penalty on military leaders who defied him and referred to dead soldiers as “suckers” and “losers”. Biden looked like he had a bad taste in his mouth. He was worked up and had to steel himself.He mused: “Sometimes I’m really happy the Irish in me can’t be seen.”Earlier this week CNN reported that younger aides on Biden’s re-election campaign had been grimly joking about when to go “full Hitler” – making a direct comparison of Trump to the Nazi leader rather than merely saying Trump “parroted” him. Biden did not quite go full Hitler but he did observe: “He talks about the blood of Americans being poisoned, echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany.”Democrats are often criticised for pulling their punches and refusing to fight dirty as Republicans do. For as long as Trump has been on the political scene, they have wrestled with the question of whether to rise above him or roll in the dirt with him. In 2018, the former attorney general Eric Holder declared: “When they go low, we kick ’em. That’s what this new Democratic party is about.”When the party’s nominee in 2016, Hillary Clinton, referred to Trump’s supporters as “deplorables”, it fed a narrative of liberal elitism but with Ordinary Joe/Dark Brandon, it is harder to make that charge stick. Years ago, responding to Trump’s misogyny, Biden said: “If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.”Tellingly, his aggressive tone on Friday was praised by Republican campaign veterans who are no strangers to politics as a bloodsport. Rick Wilson, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, wrote on X: “Everyone on the pro-democracy side of this fight should amplify the hell out of this.”Biden held a private meeting with historians this week to discuss the state of democracy and framed his speech around George Washington, the founding president who willingly relinquished power rather than become a king. He said the things that need to be said about this election on the eve of another January 6 anniversary, an outrage that animates him just as the white nationalist march in Charlottesville did in 2020.There will be time enough to discuss the economy, border security, the climate crisis, reproductive freedom and foreign policy (his critics will ask why he cannot summon such righteous fury on behalf of Palestinian civilians). Voters will surely demand not only vivid Trump-bashing but a positive vision for a second term. Friday was hardly an optimistic start to the new year.But for now, one thing is clear. The gloves are off and, assuming Trump wins the Republican nomination, this will be an election between combatants with a mutual abhorrence like none that has gone before. More