US Politics

The House has started its resolution debate on expelling New York Republican representative George Santos.Santos has remained defiant and in denial of all charges against him, including wire fraud, arguing that his fellow lawmakers are “bullying” him out of the House.Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
George Santos remained defiant ahead of the House expulsion vote. In a fiery press conference this morning on Capitol Hill, Santos accused the House ethics report which detailed “pervasive” fraud as “slanderous” and “littered in hyperbole, littered in opinion.”
Anna Kaplan, a former Democratic New York state senator who is challenging George Santos for his House seat, has responded to the upcoming House expulsion vote surrounding Santos, saying: “If George Santos is expelled tomorrow, the special election will be right around the corner. I am battle tested, and I am ready to flip New York’s third congressional district blue. We’ve already raised over $1m. We’re just getting started.”
New York Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman has released a statement in response to George Santos’s vows to introduce a privileged resolution to expel him today, saying: “No one in Congress, or anywhere in America, takes soon-to-be former congressman George Santos seriously, This is just another meaningless stunt in his long history of cons, antics and outright fraud.”
A New York appellate court reinstated a gag order on Thursday that prohibited Donald Trump and his lawyers from publicly commenting on court staff in the former president’s civil fraud case. “Petitioners having moved to stay enforcement of the aforesaid gag order and supplemental limited gag order pending hearing and determination of the instant petition. Now, upon reading and filing the papers with respect to the motion, and due deliberation having been had thereon, it is ordered that the motion is denied,” the court stated.
Donald Trump continues to attack the wife of the New York state judge Arthur Engoron, who imposed a gag order on Trump in the former president’s civil fraud case in New York. In a series of posts on Truth Social, Trump has accused Dawn Engoron of posting anti-Trump memes on X, formerly known as Twitter. Dawn has said that the X account is not run by her.
Donald Trump’s lawyer Christopher Kise has condemned the reinstatement of the gag order, telling CBS: “In a country where the first amendment is sacrosanct, President Trump may not even comment on why he thinks he cannot get a fair trial.”
The Joe Biden administration has announced new action to protect communities from lead exposure. In a statement released on Thursday, the White House revealed that the Environmental Protection Agency has announced a proposal to “strengthen its lead and cooper rule that would require water systems to replace lead service lines within 10 years, helping secure safe drinking water for communities across the country.”
A vote on Santos’s fate will take place tomorrow.Republican leaders delayed the vote, saying that they have other business to get to today. Tomorrow’s vote will be the third time this year that the chamber has considered expelling Santos.The debate has concluded.In a final defense, Santos remained defiant. He did not offer much defense of himself, but said he would not resign.“If tomorrow, when this vote is on the floor, it is in the conscience of all of my colleagues that they believe this is a correct thing to do, so be it. Take the vote. I am at peace,” he said.“I do not believe that the Long Island crew is acting in bad faith, just exceedingly bad judgement,” said the Florida Republican representative Matt Gaetz.“Since the beginning of this Congress, there’s only two ways you get expelled. You get convicted of a crime or you participated in a civil war. Neither of those apply to George Santos and so I rise, not to defend George Santos, whoever he is, but to defend the very precedent that my colleagues are willing to shatter,” he added.“I’ve heard your argument. I feel your passion. I understand your position but you’re about to go too far. Just calm down and step back,” said the Louisiana Republican representative Clay Higgins as he addressed the House.“This is what I advise my colleagues on both sides of the aisle … We’re talking about the removal of a member of Congress. Are the American people to believe the opinions of congressmen is a higher standard than the delivered vote of the American people? Is a report from a committee a higher standard than the two-year election cycle as established by our founding fathers and enshrined in our constitution? Calm down,” said Higgins.The floor has been yielded back to George Santos who is now saying: “We hear a lot about process, we hear a lot about findings … this process has been skewed, how this process is sloppy.”He added that this process “is contradictory to the core”.The findings of the committee were shocking,” said the Republican representative Michael Guest of Mississippi.“We know that the ethics committee authorized 37 subpoenas. They issued 43 requests for information. They interviewed 40 witnesses. They reviewed 172,000 pages of documents and they issued a 56-page investigation report,” he said.“The report … paints a picture of the fraud committed by Santos,” he continued, pulling up a large display of the language used in the report.“Representative Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit,” the display read, quoting from the report.“He blatantly stole from his campaign. He deceived donors into providing what they thought were contribution to his campaign but were in fact payments for his personal benefit,” it added.“I’m not trying to be arrogant or spiteful or disrespectful of the [ethics] committee but I’m curious to know, what is the schedule of the ethics committee?” said Santos, complaining that other findings launched by the ethics committee have taken years.“Why rush this? To deliver a predetermined outcome sought out by some members of our conference? Or some members of this body?” he added.“It is a predetermined necessity for some members in this body to engage in this smear campaign to destroy me. I will not stand by quietly,” he continued.“Every member expelled in history of this institution has been convicted of crimes or confederate turncoats guilty of treason. Neither of those apply to me but here we are,” said George Santos in his House remarks.“On what basis does this body feel that that precedent must be changed for me?” he said.“I have been convicted of no crimes, Mr Speaker. My loyalty to this country … is true and unquestionable,” he added.The House has started its resolution debate on expelling New York Republican representative George Santos.Santos has remained defiant and in denial of all charges against him, including wire fraud, arguing that his fellow lawmakers are “bullying” him out of the House.The Joe Biden administration has announced new action to protect communities from lead exposure.In a statement released on Thursday, the White House revealed that the Environmental Protection Agency has announced a proposal to “strengthen its lead and cooper rule that would require water systems to replace lead service lines within 10 years, helping secure safe drinking water for communities across the country.”
The president’s bipartisan infrastructure law invests over $50bn for the largest upgrade to the nation’s water infrastructure in history, and today’s action builds on these historic levels of funding from president Biden’s Investing in America agenda, a key pillar of Bidenomics, to replace lead service lines across the nation,” the White House said.
Joe Biden has once again reaffirmed his administration’s commitment to upholding protections surrounding reproductive healthcare.“Congress must codify the protections of Roe v Wade,” he tweeted on Thursday.Donald Trump’s lawyer Christopher Kise has condemned the reinstatement of the gag order, telling CBS:“In a country where the first amendment is sacrosanct, President Trump may not even comment on why he thinks he cannot get a fair trial.”Kise, who called today’s decision “a tragic day for the rule of law,” added: “Hard to imagine a more unfair process and hard to believe this is happening in America.” More

Donald Trump renewed attacks on the wife of the judge in the New York civil fraud trial of his business empire, before and almost immediately after an appellate court on Thursday reinstated a gag order against him in the case.The New York appellate court decided to reapply the gag order that barred the former US president and his lawyers from making public statements about court staff in his civil fraud trial, court records showed.Trump on Wednesday attacked Dawn Engoron, the wife of the judge, Arthur Engoron, and the judge’s clerk, on his social media platform Truth Social.He called Dawn Engoron a “Trump hating wife” and said that she and Arthur Engoron’s law clerk had “taken over control of the New York State Witch Hunt Trial aimed at me, my family, and the Republican Party”.On Thursday, the gag order against him, which had been paused two weeks ago, was reinstated, but it did not stop Trump lashing out further. The order only specifies comments about members of Judge Engoron’s staff, not his family.Trump posted screenshots of vulgar and profane anti-Trump messages on X, formerly known as Twitter, purported to have been made by Dawn Engoron – prompting her swiftly to assert that she does not have an account.“I do not have a Twitter account. This is not me. I have not posted any anti-Trump messages,” Dawn Engoron told Newsweek.One meme shows Trump digitally altered into wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and mopping floors. The caption read: “He’ll never be in the WHITE HOUSE again. He’s headed for the BIG HOUSE.”Trump then added captions to his posts, such as one that read: “This is the Judge’s Wife and Family that are putting these things out. I am not entitled to a Jury under this Statute. Can this be happening in America?”The court last month had sought to prohibit him from commenting about court staff at his trial in New York, then paused the gag order.Barely an hour after that, Trump, who is running for president again, unleashed a barrage of social media outrage at a clerk who has become the lightning rod for his rage in the case.Engoron had imposed the gag order on Trump and his lawyers in October after they repeatedly went after his court staff including his principal law clerk, Allison Greenfield, on social media, although Engoron said they were free to criticize him.The $250m case against Trump and his two adults sons over illegally inflating the value of assets of the family business empire, the Trump Organization, in a case brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, remains under way and is expected to wrap up next month. The court has found them liable but the trial, taking place without a jury, is to establish more details about the offenses committed and what the consequences should be.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump is accused of inflating his net worth by billions of dollars to dupe lenders and insurers. He has denied wrongdoing and said James is politically biased against him.Trump in October accused Engoron’s top clerk of political bias in a post on his Truth Social platform. The post left the court “inundated with hundreds of harassing and threatening phone calls, voicemails, emails, letters, and packages” from Trump supporters, Engoron said in a court filing, leading to a limited gag order.The order was paused while Trump’s lawyers appealed, arguing it infringed on his right to free speech under the US constitution.A representative of the attorney general’s office declined to comment on the order being reinstated, and Trump’s lawyers did not immediately respond to inquiries.Engoron has already fined Trump $15,000 for twice violating the order and warned that future breaches would be met with steeper penalties, including imprisonment.
Reuters contributed reporting More

Gavin Newsom won’t be on the ballot in 2024, though lately, he’s been acting a lot like he is.In the lead-up to his prime-time debate on Thursday with Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, Newsom, 56, has been busy campaigning over the last few months. He has travelled to several red states, where he also paid for billboards and television advertisements. He has challenged not just DeSantis, but a number of Republican governors including Greg Abbott of Texas. He launched a “Campaign for Democracy’’ political action committee. He met with Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel and Xi Jinping in China.But as his political star rises, his constituents are growing increasingly sceptical. The governor, who sailed through an election after thwarting a recall effort, has recently seen his approval rating sink to an all-time low. His vetoes of bills that would have expanded labour protections and rights alienated powerful unions. And his rejection of laws to outlaw caste discrimination, decriminalise psychedelics and consider gender affirmation in child custody cases has confused advocates who thought they could count on his support.A poll by UC Berkeley’s institute of governmental studies, co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times, found that 49% of registered voters in California disapproved of their governor. And 43% opposed him “taking on a more prominent role in national politics” via TV appearances and travel.“He’s taking on a new persona,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley-IGS poll. “He’s now broadening his overall political profile, and not all Californians are on board with that. They’d rather stick to the job that he was elected to do.”Newsom challenged DeSantis to a debate more than a year ago – while he was on the verge of re-election, and speculation about his presidential aspirations was already spinning full-force. DeSantis accepted in August, as polls continued to show him trailing Donald Trump by double digits in the Republican primaries.The debate is unusual and is the culmination of longstanding rivalry between DeSantis, a fervently rightwing culture warrior with a flagging bid for the presidency, and Newsom – who says he is certainly, definitely not running for president.Newsom is a surrogate for Joe Biden in the 2024 election. But his appearance on Thursday will further fuel speculation about his presidential ambitions. And with reason.The governors have been long engaged in a rivalry fueled by their diametrically opposed visions for the country, and evenly matched political ambitions. Newsom has slammed DeSantis over Florida’s school book bans, crackdowns on immigrants and the restriction of abortion rights and trans rights. After Florida flew asylum seekers to Sacramento, seemingly in order to make a statement about Democratic immigration policies, Newsom called him “small, pathetic man” and appeared to threaten kidnapping charges.Sean Hannity, who will be moderating the debate, said he sees the governors’ televised face-off as one between “two heavyweights in the political arena”. In an interview with Politico, he said they will “talk about substantive, real issues and governing philosophies that affect everyone’s lives”.But the two politicians will also have other pressures and agendas. As DeSantis’s team pushes to revive his prospects amid lagging poll numbers ahead of the Iowa caucus in January, this will be an opportunity for him to show voters how he would fare against a Democrat – one who could run for president in 2028, or even sooner should polls or concerns about age push Biden out of running.Newsom’s team, meanwhile, has indicated that this is a chance for him to elevate Biden and Democrats. Indeed, if and when Newsom does consider the presidency, he will also have to face off against Kamala Harris – Newsom’s peer in California politics – as well as other young Democrats with rising profiles, such as the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer.But to political observers, it is clear that the governor is auditioning for the possibility. “There’s no other reason for him to be debating Ron DeSantis,” said Gar Culbert, a professor of political science at Cal State Los Angeles. “He appears to be testing the waters and putting his name out there. He wants to be a person of national prominence.”A career politician who rose from the San Francisco parking and traffic commission to the governor’s office, Newsom has thus far faced few truly competitive political challenges. In order to win a national office, he will for the first time have to court a national base, including the moderate and swing voters that represent his best chance at the White House.And perhaps to that end, allies, critics and many a political consultant have speculated that the liberal, San Francisco governor has increasingly attempted to counterbalance California progressivism with nationally appealing moderation. Last year, Newsom backtracked on his support for supervised injection sites to prevent overdose deaths – leading political observers and advocates to speculate that he did so to avoid the ire of Republicans and moderates. This year, he sided with conservatives over unions in the case of key worker protections, and echoed Republican opponents in his veto of a measure outlawing caste discrimination, calling it “unnecessary”.Citing budget constraints, he also thwarted attempts to allow workers to receive unemployment benefits, spurning powerful union and labour allies who helped him win the governor’s seat in 2018.“Gavin Newsom doesn’t benefit from pleasing the voters in the state of California,” said Culbert. “Because that is not the constituency that gets him his next job.”The governor also had to engage in some complex political maneuvering when faced with the obligation to fill a Senate seat left open after the death of the former US Senator Dianne Feinstein. Newsom had promised to appoint a Black woman, and many progressives had counted on him choosing representative Barbara Lee, who was already running for the seat. Instead, Newsom chose the Democratic strategist and former labour leader, Laphonza Butler, avoiding siding with Lee over her main Democratic rivals Adam Schiff and Katie Porter. The move drew criticism from Lee’s supporters, but avoided alienating former speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats who had backed Schiff or Porter.“Newsom is in the prime of his political career,” said Sonja Diaz, director of UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Institute. “Governor of California likely isn’t the end of his story.” And right now, as a surrogate for Joe Biden, while he retains a national and international audience as governor of the most populous US state with the largest economy, is his time to build his resume and national profile, she said.But Diaz said that in the meantime, he had an important role to play in national politics – as a fundraiser for Biden and other Democrats and as a foil to prominent Republican governors like DeSantis and Abbott, who have seized a national platform to galvanise “California has an outsized role in the political zeitgeist of this country,” she said. “And Newsom is utilising that perch to articulate his vision for America.” More

The cable TV channel MSNBC and its sister network NBC’s Peacock streaming service is cancelling the weekend news show The Mehdi Hasan Show, with its eponymous outspoken host, people familiar with the decision have told the news website Semafor.The host and journalist Mehdi Hasan will instead become an on-camera analyst and guest host, the outlet reported on Thursday. The Peacock original show will be replaced by an additional hour of Ayman, the news program hosted by Ayman Mohyeldin.Staff were made aware of the news on Thursday morning, according to Semafor.The show, which was broadcast live on Sundays at 8pm US eastern time, covered national politics, current affairs and global news.The show’s reported cancellation sent shockwaves through his fanbase.The prominent human rights attorney Noura Erakat called the show “an oasis on air and more needed than ever”.Hasan was known for inviting guests on to his show and engaging with them in a fierce debate, often fact-checking and correcting them in real time. His line of questioning was often direct and unrelenting, refusing to let his guest avoid giving an answer.Some of his past guests included the former national security adviser John Bolton, whom he questioned about his vehement support for the Iraq war, launched by then president George W Bush in 2003, despite it resulting in an overwhelming number of civilian deaths.In September, Hasan interviewed the 2024 Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, whom he questioned about his position against affirmative action in US higher education, despite being a recipient of a scholarship for immigrants and their children.More recently, Hasan has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s bombardment and military assault of Gaza after the state declared war on the Palestinian territory’s controlling militant group, following Hamas’s mass murder attack on southern Israel on 7 October. Earlier in November, he interviewed Mark Regev, senior adviser to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s former ambassador to the UK, questioning Regev firmly on the high Palestinian civilian death toll, the Palestinian children that were killed by the Israeli military and and related matters.Hasan asked: “They’re people your government has killed. You’ve killed children. You accept that, right? Or do you deny that?”To which Regev replied: “No, I do not.”Along with Mohyeldin and NBC’s Ali Velshi, Hasan was among the few Muslim anchors in American television.Before what is reportedly the official cancellation of the Mehdi Hasan show, NBC faced criticism for temporarily taking these Muslim anchors off of the air in the midst of the war in Gaza. Although one of Hasan’s scheduled Thursday night episodes did not air, plans were scrapped for Ayman Mohyeldin to fill in for the host Joy Reid on her show, and Alicia Menendez filled in for Ali Velshi, NBC denied reports it was sidelining Muslim voices and that the move was purely coincidence.Hasan, a Briton of Indian-descent, moved to the US in 2015. He became a US citizen in 2020. Previously, Hasan was a senior columnist at the Intercept, a regular contributor to the Guardian and a presenter for Al Jazeera English.Hasan is a graduate of the University of Oxford, where he studied philosophy, politics and economics. There, he memorably debated the subject of Islam and defended that it was a peaceful religion. The video, posted on the Oxford Union YouTube channel has over 10m views.Neither Hasan nor NBC immediately responded to a request for comment. More

It seems churlish for any member of the party of Donald Trump to single out George Santos for punishment as a liar, fraudster and fabulist. The 23 federal charges against the first-term member of Congress pale beside the Republican frontrunner’s 91 felony counts and civil suits over fraud and E Jean Carroll’s defamation claim, based on her allegation of rape. Republicans’ faux horror at the discovery of Santos’s extravagant spending of campaign funds on Botox, casino chips and OnlyFans porn belies their previous blithe tolerance of the red-dressed, gay-pride, Brazilian drag queen in their midst. Santos thrived as the symbol of the cultural contradictions of Republicanism. Did his sophisticated taste for accessories from Hermès and Ferragamo finally do him in with his anti-globalist colleagues?The facts of Santos’s false identity were pried apart gradually, beginning before he was even sworn in. Slowly, his crimes were revealed. Exposé after exposé – yet nothing happened. So long as Santos voted as a reliable Republican (100% Heritage Action rating), he was shielded from ritual rounds of queer bashing, much less expulsion. The narrow Republican majority in the House of Representatives required every able-bodied member who could hold up an arm. Santos was straight as a party liner.Only when the stories of Santos’s lifetime of fraud became a rushing torrent did Kevin McCarthy, then speaker, refer the question to the ethics committee. There, it stayed bottled up. Republicans were always reluctant to excise Santos. His fate was entangled in the foul politics of the House.Only after McCarthy was deposed by an ultra-right cabal, and three prospective speakers chosen by a majority went down to defeat before Mike Johnson was elected, was an ethics report released and the expulsion of Santos brought up. It was a case of the first time as farce and the second, third and fourth times as farce, to be followed by the most comical farce of all.The day the Republican chair of the ethics committee introduced a motion to expel poor George, a leak from the forthcoming memoir of Liz Cheney – purged from her leadership post in the Republican conference in 2021, scourged for opposing Trump’s attempted overthrow of the US government, defeated in a vicious primary in 2022 – revealed that Santos was hardly among the most risible prevaricators in the House. McCarthy had explained to Cheney that he went on his humiliating visit to Trump at Mar-a-Lago a mere three weeks after the January 6 insurrection out of pity, because he felt bad that Trump was “depressed”.“He’s not eating,” said McCarthy. This excuse from the supreme sycophant – “My Kevin,” Trump called him – was as likely as Trump not violating the constitution’s emoluments clause to enrich himself. The only plausible reason for Trump not eating would be because there was a double cheeseburger already lodged in his gullet.Then the Washington Post reported that several weeks after McCarthy’s fall, he had a troubling call with Trump, who informed him why he had been the not-so-hidden hand behind his ouster. McCarthy, Trump explained, had not expunged Trump’s two impeachments and endorsed him for 2024. McCarthy’s pilgrimage to Trump in early 2021, which made Trump’s revenge tour possible, had gained him no credit. As speaker, McCarthy had immense control over the spigot of Republican money and the influence that flows from it. If he had decided to ignore Trump’s threats and cut him off, Trump would have been severely disabled. But McCarthy revived the monster, so the monster in turn could strangle him. At long last, too late, McCarthy said to Trump: “Fuck you.”The newly installed speaker, Mike Johnson, declares himself divinely anointed. (Does that make Matt Gaetz the hand of God?) “I believe that Scripture, the Bible, is very clear: that God is the one who raises up those in authority,” he said, in his inaugural speech. Johnson extended his omniscience about the Lord’s blessing to every other member of the House. “He raised up each of you. All of us.” Presumably, the elect included Santos.When it came to a vote to expel Santos, Johnson recoiled. He had “real reservations”. He would not apply the whip. Members could “vote their conscience”. As for himself, he said he was “concerned about a precedent that may be set for that”. In 2022, Johnson sponsored the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act, that would ban teaching “concepts like masturbation, pornography, sexual acts, and gender transition”, and prohibit “federal grants to host and promote sexually oriented events like drag queen story hours and burlesque shows”. Now, he would allow members to consider forgiveness for the sinner’s financial crimes, in “good faith”.Johnson might well cite Matthew 7:1: “Judge not, that ye not be judged.” His own financial disclosure forms since he was a state legislator in Louisiana and as a member of the House are extraordinarily sketchy. He claimed he did not have a bank account. But as a legislator he had a contract to bill the state $400,000 to defend a law he sponsored to restrict abortion clinic access. In 2015 his financial disclosure form showed he cleared tens of thousands from religious right organizations: Freedom Guard, a legal operation; Living Waters Publications, a Christian publishing house that offered “biblical evangelism training camps”; Louisiana Right to Life; Louisiana Freedom Forum; and the Providence Classical Academy ($5,000-$24,999), “part-time”.The House ethics committee report on Santos buried within it a document compiled by his own campaign before the election in 2022 that detailed many lies and frauds later exposed. He and his campaign, as well as the National Republican Congressional Committee, were apparently all cognizant of the fraud from the start. Exhibit six of the ethics committee report consists of the 141-page “George Santos Vulnerability Report”, a point-by-point description of fake college degrees, Ponzi schemes, fraudster firms, scams, multiple civil judgments for cheating creditors, evictions and incident after incident of questionable behavior.The “vulnerability report” also chronicled Santos’s evolving story of his grandparents, from Belgian migrants who “fled the devastation of world war II Europe” into “Holocaust refugees”. This was the first falsehood about his background disclosed by the media, by CNN a week after his election. His fabrication of his identity, down to hiding his real given name (“George Devolder”) was an act of brazen and clumsy thievery he got away with to get into office with the aid of complicit campaign handlers.Santos’s conception, in a larger sense, came with the demise of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), commonly known as McCain-Feingold. Trashing that law created a world of dark money campaign contributions where almost anything goes. Santos’s spree was a byproduct of the post-campaign finance reform era. If he had only consulted an attorney to show him where the few remaining fine lines were, he could have gratified much of his urge for grift and glitz while avoiding indictment.Santos’s godparents in this respect were the Kentucky Republican senator Mitch McConnell, who worked for decades to torpedo reform, and the conservative justices of the supreme court, whose ruling sank McCain-Feingold. McConnell sought to forge a political empire built on unregulated corporate cash. He grasped that the keys to his kingdom would be held by the courts. So, as Senate majority leader, he frustrated reform legislation and packed the courts.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt took some doing but finally, in 2010, Anthony Kennedy, in his majority opinion in the Citizens United case, struck down the crucial sections of the BCRA. Corporations now had the untrammeled right to spend as much as they wanted in campaigns and certain non-profit organizations did not have to disclose their donors. With a flourish of naive certainty, Kennedy stated: “Ingratiation and access, in any event, are not corruption.” The chief justice, John Roberts, echoed that view in his ruling in the 2022 case, SEC v Cruz, in which he decided that a candidate, here the Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz, could raise money after an election to pay campaign debts. With equally trusting innocence, Roberts wrote: “The government has not shown that [the law] furthers a permissible anticorruption goal, rather than the impermissible objective of simply limiting the amount of money in politics.”The sluice gates of dark money opened. From the multibillion-dollar operation of Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society to enact the conservative agenda through domination of the courts, the legal corruption trickled down. The gutting of the campaign finance law unleashed a frenzied atmosphere in which fraudsters like Santos could feel unrestrained. His wild ride was not directly related to the letter of the Citizens United decision, but to its reckless spirit.Then came Santos’s crash. Nobody offered more cogent analysis of his Republican colleagues’ sudden aversion to him than Santos himself.“I was, as we joke around a lot in my circles, we’re like, ‘Oh my God you were the ‘It Girl.’ Everybody wanted you.’ Until nobody wanted me.”He was stigmatized, as a sinner in a den of sinners. “Within the ranks of the United States Congress there’s felons galore,” he said. His casting out reminded him of a character from the Bible. “There’s people with all sorts of sheisty backgrounds and all of a sudden George Santos is the Mary Magdalene of the United States Congress.” Reviled now as a prostitute, he has faith he will be canonized as a saint. Expulsion means never having to say you’re sorry.Expelling Santos cannot unwind that he was let into the House to witness what happened behind the scenes. His Republican colleagues, he said, are “more worried about getting drunk every night with the next lobbyist that they’re going to screw –and pretend like none of us know what’s going on”. He held a press conference to warn, “If the House wants to start different precedent and expel me, that is going to be the undoing of a lot of members of this body because this will haunt them in their future.”Perhaps George Santos has been divinely sent, a messenger to expose hypocrisy. God is not finished with him yet. We await the tell-all memoir and the Netflix series.
Sidney Blumenthal is a Guardian columnist and author of The Permanent Campaign, published in 1980, and All the Power of the Earth: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1856-1860, the third of a projected five volumes. He is the former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and senior adviser to Hillary Clinton More

George Santos appealed to democratic norms on Thursday in a last-ditch effort to resist an expected vote to expel him from the US House of Representatives, describing efforts to remove him as “bullying” and warning that “the undoing of a lot of members of this body” would follow.The embattled Republican congressman, who is facing a third effort to expel him from Congress with a House vote due on Friday, told reporters outside the US Capitol in Washington DC that it was “an unfortunate circumstance to watch Congress waste the American people’s time over and over again on something that is in the power of the people, not the power of Congress”.Following a congressional ethics report that alleged Santos had used campaign funds for personal gain, including spending on Botox, OnlyFans, which is commonly used to procure pornography, and designer brands such as Hermès, Santos said the move to expel him on the basis of an ethics report was a rejection of precedent.The report, he argued, was “littered” with hyperbole and opinion. “No decent cop would bring this to a prosecutor or a DA and say here’s our report, go ahead and charge him.”Santos has already been charged with 23 federal counts including conspiracy, wire fraud, false statements, falsification of records, aggravated identity theft and credit card fraud.Only five members of Congress have previously been expelled. Santos said that lawmakers were “trying to join him to three Confederates and two people convicted in a court of law”.Santos went on to slam Congress as a “house that doesn’t work for the people” and accused some fellow Republican lawmakers as people “with rap sheets who think and feel emboldened enough to call out other people”.On Thursday, New York’s Staten Island representative, Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican, told CNN: “The earth is round and George Santos should be expelled.”Republicans have a wafer-thin majority in the House, which will come under further pressure if Santos is expelled and a special election called in his New York district, which takes in a portion of New York City and Long Island.Malliotakis said of GOP control of the House: “Of course I’m concerned, but that should not be taken into account at the moment. The issue is, should this man be in Congress? He should not.” She further told CNN she thought due process, which some Republicans defending Santos’s place in Congress have said has not been sufficiently followed, had been fulfilled by the thorough ethics review in committee.But Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the House judiciary committee, told the rightwing outlet Newsmax that he was against expulsion, arguing the issue was between Santos and voters in his district. “That’s how our system works,” Jordan said to Newsmax.Earlier, Santos also said he would introduce a privileged motion to expel Jamaal Bowman, the Democratic New York representative, over an incident in which he set off a fire alarm during a vote, which the House ethics committee had opted not to investigate.“No one in Congress, or anywhere in America, takes soon-to-be former Congressman George Santos seriously. This is just another meaningless stunt in his long history of cons, antics, and outright fraud,” Bowman said in response.Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, told Axios on Thursday that a vote to expel Santos would now come on Friday. Santos has said that a vote today was “kind of not cool” since it was his second wedding anniversary.Johnson has said lawmakers should vote with their conscience, adding: “I, personally, have real reservations about doing this. I’m concerned about a precedent that may be set for that.”He continued: “I think [that] is the only appropriate thing we can do. We’ve not whipped the vote, and we wouldn’t. I trust that people will make that decision thoughtfully and in good faith.”Santos has previously described the effort to remove him as a “smear”. In a defiant speech on Tuesday, he hit back: “Are we to now assume that one is no longer innocent until proven guilty and they are, in fact, guilty until proven innocent?”If the move to to expel him is successful, the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, will have to call a special election within 10 days of Santos’s expulsion. More

Declarations of the end of an era are made only in exceptional circumstances. Henry Kissinger’s death is one of them.

Kissinger was born into a Jewish family in Germany, and fled to the US in 1938 after the Nazis seized power. He rose to one of the highest offices in the US government, and became the first person to serve as both secretary of state and national security adviser.

The 1973 Nobel Peace prize, which Kissinger shared with his North Vietnamese counterpart Le Duc Tho, recognised his contribution to the negotiations that ended the Vietnam war.

Kissinger advised a dozen US presidents, from Richard Nixon to Joe Biden. For advocates of realpolitik – a quintessentially pragmatic, utilitarian approach to foreign affairs – Kissinger was both author and master.

Across many years, his viewpoint remained largely unchanged: national security is the centrepiece of sovereignty, as both a means, and end in itself. From this perspective, Kissinger’s transformative diplomatic involvement in seminal events in the 20th century, and iconic insights in the 21st have shaped swathes of western geopolitics.

His fierce ambition was a key part of his vision, namely to rework the bipolar structure of the cold war, bent on establishing both US power, and arguably his own role in it.

Kissinger had no qualms backing the military dictatorship behind Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor in the 1970s. He supported the CIA in overthrowing president Salvador Allende of Chile in 1970, advocated sustained bombing in areas of North Vietnam, and encouraged the wiretapping of journalists critical of his Vietnam policy. He prioritised security over human rights, and commercial control over self-determination.

None of this was surprising. Kissinger’s entire approach to foreign policy was unsentimental at best, and brutish at worst. Peace, and the power to conclude a peace, could only be hewn coarsely from the unforgiving fibre of state relations, he believed.

To his critics, Kissinger’s actions in Vietnam, Chile, Indonesia and beyond significantly challenged his legacy of negotiation and diplomacy, and – in the eyes of some – were tantamount to war crimes.

Peacemaker or polariser?

Kissinger’s legacy will remain a mixed one. It incorporated truly ground-breaking efforts in opening up talks between the US with China and the Soviet Union, alongside visibly polarising outcomes for US foreign policy in its relations with South America and south-east Asia.

As secretary of state to presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Kissinger’s geopolitical achievements established him as an elder statesman of the Republican Party. This rested on a trinity of endeavours: pulling the US out of the Vietnam War, establishing a host of new diplomatic connections between the US and China, and cultivating the first stages of détente (improved relations) with the Soviet Union.

Vietnam remains the most contentious of these areas, with accusations that Kissinger blithely applied bombing and destruction in Cambodia to extract the US from the Vietnam war. The peace was fragile and hostilities continued for years afterwards without the Americans.

Read more:
Henry Kissinger’s bombing campaign likely killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians − and set path for the ravages of the Khmer Rouge

Nixon and China

Kissinger’s reputation is on sturdier grounds with the grand strategy to permanently open relations between the US and both China and the Soviet Union. This facilitated a reduction in east-west tensions that materially benefited the US. It also saw Kissinger effectively playing the two communist powers against each other.

Concentrated through the lens of the cold war, the majority of Kissinger’s interactions were based on an approach that balanced caution with aggression, and pragmatism with the acquisition of power.

This was sometimes directly, but often through the use of proxy wars, including Vietnam and the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and Arab states, which descended into a power play with the Soviets, as did the 1971 India-Pakistan war. The image of Kissinger entirely comfortable with the high-stakes poker game between superpowers is an arresting one.

Post-cold war geopolitics did not diminish Kissinger’s overall approach. He counselled generations of US decision-makers to remember the virtues of allying with smaller states as well as superpowers for reasons of power and commerce, and a commitment to retain lethal force in the US foreign policy toolbox.

For scholars of international relations, Kissinger’s numerous books, from the iconic Diplomacy and Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, to Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy are an inventory of hard-headed views on the unrelenting demands of classic and modern statecraft and the challenges of crafting not just foreign policy, but grand strategy.

They are also a masterclass in European history, with a powerful message regarding sovereignty and the supreme role of the national interests in foreign policy, regionally and globally.

President Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger in the grounds of the White House, Washington DC, August 16 1975.
Everett Collection/Alamy

Kissinger’s relentless dedication to realpolitik as the fiercest approach to managing international affairs is at odds with the many elements of his personality. Nowhere is this more evident than in his writing, with “characteristics ranging from brilliance and wit to sensitivity, melancholy, abrasiveness and savagery”.

Kissinger’s final impact is on the hardware and software of global diplomacy: guns versus ideas. A pragmatic, even cynical approach tackling the imbalance of power between states impelled Kissinger to promote seemingly paradoxical approaches: ground-breaking diplomatic approaches to ensure peace, easily reconciled with a ruthless reliance on military power.

This, in turn, gave his counterparts little option other than to cooperate, which they generally did, from the North Vietnamese to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, to China’s prime minister Zhou Enlai.

In his later years, seemingly immune to his foreign policy bungles, Kissinger’s celebrity diplomat status remained undimmed, somehow confirming the sense that international relations routinely transcends domestic politics, and in doing so, remains both a high stakes game, and a distinctive area of practice. His passion for foreign affairs never dimmed, commenting on the October 7 Hamas attack just a few weeks before his death.

For every one of Kissinger’s brilliant moves, there was a bungling countermove. Students of foreign policy need therefore to consider both Kissinger’s scholarship and his practice.

They should look through examples of his work in which one side seizes upon anything resembling a diplomatic opportunity, and commandeers its potential to produce a win, and then calls that a victory. Such victories however could be fleeting and left behind tensions that frequently came home to roost. More

World leaders have offered condolences and praise for Henry Kissinger, a former US secretary of state, who died on Wednesday at the age of 100, as his death elicited sharply divided responses over his legacy.Kissinger shared the 1973 Nobel peace prize for his role in negotiating an end to the Vietnam war but his foreign policy efforts in support of US interests were controversial, and his involvement in foreign conflicts and in overthrowing democratically elected governments around the world saw him branded by opponents as a war criminal.A Rolling Stone magazine headline said: “Henry Kissinger, war criminal beloved by America’s ruling class, finally dies.”The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said Kissinger was a “wise and talented statesman”.“I had the opportunity to personally communicate with this deep, extraordinary man many times, and I will undoubtedly retain the fondest memory of him,” Putin wrote in a telegram to Kissinger’s widow. The text was posted to the Kremlin’s website.“The name of Henry Kissinger is inextricably linked with a pragmatic foreign policy line, which at one time made it possible to achieve detente in international tensions and reach the most important Soviet-American agreements that contributed to the strengthening of global security,” Putin said.China hailed Kissinger as an “old friend”. Kissinger was central to the US’s decision to switch diplomatic relations from Taipei to Beijing in the 1970s, recognising the communist People’s Republic on the mainland rather than the government in exile on Taiwan as the legitimate power. Kissinger visited China more than 100 times, most recently in July, when he held talks with President Xi Jinping.“It is a tremendous loss for both our countries and the world,” the Chinese ambassador to the US, Xie Feng, said in a post on the social media platform X.“History will remember what the centenarian had contributed to China-US relations, and he will always remain alive in the hearts of the Chinese people as a most valued old friend,” he added.After leaving office, Kissinger grew wealthy advising businesses on China, and had warned against a hawkish turn in US policy. Chinese officials have struggled in recent years to hide their nostalgia for the days of rapprochement under Kissinger.In a lengthy obituary on Thursday, Beijing’s state broadcaster CCTV hailed his “historic contribution to the opening of the door to US-China relations”. Kissinger, it said, was “an important witness who experienced the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States and the development of the relationship between the two countries”.A hashtag on the social media platform Weibo had about 770,000 views, with the discussion highly complimentary. “Epic diplomat, I hope the US-China relationship gets better and better,” said one comment.“Commemorating Mr Kissinger, the greatest secretary of state in the history of the United States. Mr Kissinger, an old friend of the Chinese people, at the age of 100, passed away peacefully at his home,” said another.However, in Taiwan some people called his death “good news”, citing his involvement in starting the rush of nations to switch ties to Beijing. “Bless him for being Chinese in his next life,” one said.Foreign ministry officials in Taipei described Kissinger as a “towering figure in the history of American diplomacy”, while the opposition Kuomintang party, which ruled the island as a Chinese government-in-exile at the time of the US switch, offered its condolences to his family.“We recognise Kissinger’s efforts to bring about peace and prosperity in the Indo Pacific throughout his career in and outside government,” it said in a tweet, prompting incredulity and scorn from some users.“He takes away your UNSC seat and you mourn his death. That’s … a choice,” said one.While Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize for his role in negotiating a ceasefire in Vietnam in 1973, many in the region accuse him of prolonging the conflict, and point to his authorisation of secret bombing campaigns in Laos and Cambodia.Dr Sophal Ear, an associate professor at Arizona State University’s Thunderbird school of global management, who was born in Cambodia and who, as a child, fled the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, described Kissinger’s legacy in the country as “one of horror”.“Kissinger’s impact on Cambodia is in the deaths and continuing unexploded ordnances littering the country, the physical maiming, loss of human capital, and the mental health toll that millions suffer. The bombing took a heavy, heavy toll and destabilised the country at a critical juncture,” he said.Vu Minh Hoang, a faculty member in history and Vietnam studies at Fulbright University Vietnam, said he believed Kissinger had “prolonged a very bloody war unnecessarily from 1968-1973, which may also have denied the Vietnamese a more peaceful and inclusive reunification and national reconciliation”.How others in Vietnam feel about Kissinger’s death is hard to say, he added. “Mostly, I think people who care will be happy to hear of it, but most would have moved on. Some will be sad, as they always are with the passing of any sort of celebrity, particularly western celebs.”No government officials in Vietnam commented on his death on Thursday, and news coverage was mostly translations of foreign stories. Among the public, sentiments were mixed. On social media one user wrote: “I have been waiting for this moment for too long. He is the enemy of Vietnamese people”, adding laughing emoji. But another commented: “A legend! American will never have someone like him again.”In Japan, the prime minister, Fumio Kishida, hailed Kissinger’s “significant contributions” to peace and stability in Asia. In the 1970s Kissinger referred to the Japanese as “treacherous sons of bitches” for wanting normal relations with China when he was national security adviser to Nixon, according to documents declassified in 2006.Kissinger “made significant contributions to the regional peace and stability, including the normalisation of diplomatic ties between the US and China”, Kishida told reporters. “I’d like to express my most sincere respect to the great achievements he made,” Kishida added. “I also would like to offer my condolences.”Political leaders in western Europe took a largely respectful tone for a consequential figure. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, posted: “Henry Kissinger was a giant of history. His century of ideas and of diplomacy had a lasting influence on his time and on our world.”The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said that with the death of the German-born Kissinger, who retained his Bavarian accent, the world had lost “a great diplomat”.“His commitment to the transatlantic friendship between the USA and Germany was significant, and he always remained close to his German homeland.”The former British prime minister Tony Blair said he was “in awe” of Kissinger.In Latin America, where Kissinger is widely reviled for his support of brutal right-wing dictatorships during the late 1960s and 70s, the former US secretary of state was remembered in far harsher terms.Critics recalled the key role Kissinger had played in helping usher in 17 years of military dictatorship in Chile after the US-backed coup against Salvador Allende on 11 September 1973 brought GenAugusto Pinochet to power.Reacting to the news of Kissinger’s death, Juan Gabriel Valdés, Chile’s ambassador to the US, tweeted: “A man whose historical brilliance could never conceal his profound moral wretchedness.”Daniel Jadue, a prominent leftwing politician in Chile, tweeted: “Another criminal who dies in total impunity,” calling Kissinger “an instigator and accomplice of slaughters in Asia, Africa and Latin America”.The Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, paid tribute to Kissinger’s role in laying the groundwork for the historic 1979 peace deal with Egypt. He said the diplomat “laid the cornerstone of the peace agreement, which was later signed with Egypt, and so many other processes around the world I admire”.The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under pressure to end military activity that has killed tens of thousands in Gaza, launched after Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on 7 October, said he had met Kissinger on many occasions, describing them as lessons in diplomacy and statesmanship. “His understanding of the complexities of international relations and his unique insights into the challenges facing our world were unparalleled,” he said.Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, described Henry Kissinger as a stalwart of strategic politics and world diplomacy, saying: “It has been a privilege to have recently engaged with him on various issues on the international agenda. His passing saddens us, and I express my personal condolences, as well as those of the Italian government, to his family and loved ones.”The Italian foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, wrote on X: “I want to remember Kissinger, Nobel Peace prize laureate, as a friend of Italy and a staunch supporter of transatlantic relations. A pillar of diplomacy, the younger generation will learn from his writings the art of dialogue and negotiation, always striving for the benefit of global equilibrium.” More