US Politics

The bad news is that the US healthcare system is broken and dysfunctional. We spend twice as much per capita as almost any other country, nearly $13,000 per year, while 85 million Americans remain uninsured or underinsured. In addition, our health outcomes are often worse. In terms of life expectancy, for example, we live far shorter lives than the people of many other industrialized nations.The system is failing ordinary Americans. On the other hand, the insurance and drug companies that dominate it have sky-high profits and their CEOs receive exorbitant compensation packages. The thousands of lobbyists those companies have on Capitol Hill are also doing very well.It’s time for a change.As disastrous as our overall healthcare system is, our primary care system is even worse. Tens of millions of Americans live in communities where they cannot find a doctor or dentist, even when they have insurance, while others have to wait months to get seen. Despite spending a huge amount of money on healthcare, the United States doesn’t have enough doctors, dentists, nurses, mental health practitioners, pharmacists or home healthcare workers. And that workforce shortage is getting worse.Most countries spend between 10% and 15% of their healthcare budgets on primary care. Canada spends 13%, Germany spends 15%, Spain spends 17% and Australia spends 18%. We spend less than 7%.In other words, instead of investing in disease prevention and enabling people to gain easy and timely access to the medical care they need, we spend heavily on expensive hospital and tertiary care. Our “system” is there big time when people end up in the hospital. We just don’t do much to keep them from going there.Every major medical organization agrees that our investment in primary healthcare is woefully inadequate. They understand that focusing on disease prevention and providing Americans with a medical home will not only saves lives and ease human suffering, but save money. Providing primary care to all is not only good public policy, it is cost-effective.The major backbone of our current primary care system, especially for low- and moderate-income Americans, is the Federally Qualified Community Health Center program. Today, 30 million men, women and children receive high-quality primary healthcare at community health centers in 14,000 neighborhoods located in every state in America. Many of these centers also provide dental care, mental health counseling and low-cost prescription drugs.According to a recent study by an expert at the Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine, community health centers saved Medicare and Medicaid $25bn in 2021 alone.In fact, research has shown that it is about $2,300 less expensive for a Medicaid patient to receive care from a community health center than at a private clinic and it is roughly $1,200 less expensive for a Medicare patient to receive care at a community health center than at an outpatient clinic.At a time when millions of Americans have no option but to go to an emergency room for their basic healthcare needs, it turns out that an emergency room visit is about 10 times more expensive than going to a community health center.One thing is certain. We cannot address the primary healthcare crisis unless we also address the major shortages that we have in our healthcare workforce. According to the most recent estimates, over the next decade our country faces a shortage of over 120,000 doctors – including a major shortage of primary care doctors.The nursing shortage may even be worse. Over the next two years alone it is estimated that we will need between 200,000 and 450,000 more nurses.We also have a shortage of some 100,000 dentists in America.And, despite the very serious mental health crisis we are facing, there is a massive shortage of mental health service providers – psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, counselors, addiction specialists and many more.For many years members of Congress have talked about these crises. Now is the time to act. As chairman of the US Senate health, education, labor and pensions (Help) committee I am working hard to pass bipartisan legislation which will transform our primary healthcare system so that every American, no matter where they live or what their income might be, can get the care they need when they need it.If we increased funding for primary care by $130bn over five years, through a combination of increased federal funding and the elimination of some of the enormous waste and bureaucracy in the current healthcare system, we could double the number of people using community health centers and come close to providing primary healthcare to every person in America.Further, an investment of $40bn over five years could substantially increase the number of doctors, nurses, dentists and mental health care providers we desperately need.Is this $170bn, five-year investment in our primary care system and healthcare workforce a lot of money?Yes. It is. But let’s be clear. This $34bn annual investment to improve our healthcare system would amount to less than half of the increase that Congress provided to the Pentagon last year alone.In my view, healthcare is a human right. The legislation that I am proposing would go a long way towards accomplishing that goal.
Bernie Sanders is a US senator and chairman of the health, education, labor and pensions committee. He represents the state of Vermont, and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress More

Such is the dismal state of the US supreme court that it is genuinely surprising any time the court’s conservative supermajority turns down an opportunity to further distort American democracy to the benefit of their partisan benefactors and enhance the prospects of enduring one-party minority rule.Moore v Harper – the case from North Carolina involving the so-called “independent state legislature” (ISL) theory, the ludicrous notion that state legislatures have a free hand when it comes to election law and redistricting, unfettered by pesky state constitutions, state supreme courts or even gubernatorial vetos – was satisfyingly swatted away on Tuesday by a 6-3 majority.This theory, spawned from a footnote in the then Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s concurrence in Bush v Gore, and nurtured for two decades in the hothouse of conservative legal academia, lacks any grounding in American history, represents a terrifying threat to elections as we know them, and should never have made it this far in the courts.The decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, makes it clear that the constitution’s elections clause does not carve out an exception to the fundamental principle of judicial review. “When state legislatures prescribe the rules concerning federal elections, they remain subject to the ordinary exercise of state judicial review,” Roberts wrote, in a decision joined by the court’s three liberals and justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.It’s good news and a welcome sigh of relief. Taken to its extreme – as seems to be the practice in so many conservative state legislatures these days – the ISL theory could have handed state legislatures, many already deeply gerrymandered and beyond the control of state voters, dangerous unchecked powers with regard to election certification and presidential electors. And it could have removed state courts, constitutions, governors and potentially even independent redistricting commissions and ballot initiatives as any meaningful check on runaway legislatures.But while the headlines proclaim victory for American democracy, and supreme court reporters hoist the chief justice back on their shoulders as a great centrist hope, it’s far too soon to celebrate. Buried within the details of this decision, as well as a short concurrence by Kavanaugh, are the seeds of future cases to come. This decision is hardly the silver bullet antidote to take down this dangerous zombie notion once and for all.The court’s decision makes clear that the elections clause does not liberate state legislatures from state constitutions and state law, but also that federal courts must not abandon their duty to exercise judicial review. “This Court has an obligation to ensure that state court interpretations of state law do not evade federal law,” Roberts writes.Furthermore, state courts, according to the decision, must “not transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review such that they arrogate to themselves the power vested in state legislatures to regulate federal elections”.What does that mean? The court does not tell us. As the NYU law professor Rick Pildes points out, the decision does not adopt any standard at all, set any boundaries whatsoever, or even rule on whether the North Carolina state court exceeded its role. We head into the 2024 presidential election without any sense of what the federal courts believe to be an appropriate and non-transgressive role for state courts to play.That means that one of the most important lines from the decision might be this one from Kavanaugh’s short concurrence: “In other words, the Court has recognized and articulated a general principle for federal court review of state court decisions in federal election cases. In the future, the Court should and presumably will distill that general principle into a more specific standard such as the one advanced by Chief Justice Rehnquist.”The court’s decision invites future cases. (Kavanaugh issued a similar invitation for future cases in a short concurrence in the Alabama redistricting case this month that affirmed what remains of section two of the Voting Rights Act.) They may arrive in the days after the 2024 presidential election. And they could prove crucial in deeply gerrymandered Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona, three extraordinarily close states that provided President Biden’s electoral college victory in 2020 with the slenderest of margins, and where election deniers, some in the state legislature, made mischief with the results.A court that has already proven, time and again, its willingness to put the thumb on the scale for its own side in cases at the heart of American democracy may decide those future cases on a case-by-case basis, with no clear standard at all, based on how the individual justices feel about that state supreme court’s interpretation, and perhaps the consequence of that ruling. It’s an uncomfortable position to begin a presidential election, given the fact that, in many states, election deniers are in a stronger place today than they were on 6 January 2021.There are so few moments to breathe easier these days. Today’s surprising reasonableness from the court offers a respite. It may only be a brief one.
David Daley is the author of Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count and Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy. He is a senior fellow at FairVote More

Federal prosecutors in the classified documents case against Donald Trump have asked for a tentative trial date in December, but the complex nature of the US government’s own rules for using such secrets in court, and expected legal challenges, could delay the trial until at least the spring of 2024.Trump was charged with retaining national defense information, including US nuclear secrets and plans for US retaliation in the event of an attack, which means his case will be tried under the rules laid out in the Classified Information Procedures Act, or Cipa.The statute was passed in the 1980s to protect the government against the “graymail” problem in national security cases, a tactic where the defense threatens to reveal classified information at trial, betting that the government would prefer to drop the charges rather than risk disclosure.Cipa essentially requires the defense to disclose what classified information they want to use at trial in advance, so the courts can decide whether to add restrictions. If the government feels the restrictions aren’t enough, they can decide whether they still want to continue with the case.While Cipa established a mechanism through which the government can safely charge cases involving classified documents, the series of steps that have to be followed means it takes longer to get to trial compared with regular criminal cases without national security implications.Cipa also requires the defense to review all classified materials and draft briefs in an ultra-secure room designed to handle secret documents called a sensitive compartmented information facility (Scif). If the only Scif is in Miami, just the back-and-forth travel could necessitate a slower schedule.The prosecutors in the Trump case have indicated they want to get to trial quickly, but the complexities of Cipa and Trump’s clear preference for delay – if he wins the election before it gets to trial, the case may be dropped – could significantly push back the government’s proposed timetable.To that end, the timetable amounts to more of a signal from prosecutors that they believe they would be ready to take the Trump case to trial before the end of the year, than a realistic schedule, since it will be subject to multiple hurdles, as identified by legal experts familiar with the process.
Cipa section 2: timings conference
Section 2 requires the US district court judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over the Trump classified documents case in Florida, to promptly hold a hearing with prosecutors and the Trump legal team to establish a timetable for the discovery of classified materials and their use at trial.The process was started on Monday when Cannon scheduled a hearing to take place on 14 July. That date suggests she will pursue a slower schedule than proposed by the government, which had sought to get the hearing done and start the discovery of classified documents by 10 July.
Cipa section 3: classified discovery
Just like in any other case, the government is required to provide to the defense all materials they intend to use at trial – including the classified documents. Section 3 requires Cannon to issue a protective order governing the discovery of classified documents to the defense.The protective order is the first hurdle because it needs to be blessed by Cannon before the government can start with the classified discovery. The Trump legal team may challenge the conditions of the protective order.Trump can challenge the protective order by asking Cannon for an exemption – potentially to extend access to the former president himself – according to an informal handbook for prosecutors known as the Justice Manual, which could delay the start of the classified discovery towards the end of July.
Cipa section 4: redactions in discovery
Section 4 stipulates that Cannon can authorize the government to “delete specified items of classified information from documents to be made available to the defendant through discovery” or to substitute the classified documents for “unclassified summaries” of the material.It is unclear whether the government will file a section 4 motion. But if it does, that could prompt a challenge from the Trump legal team. If Cannon then agrees that Trump can have all the discoverable documents without restrictions, the government may seek an interlocutory appeal.In its proposed timetable, the government gave itself a deadline of 14 August for a section 4 motion. Since that motion would govern the extent of the classified discovery, the Trump legal team may use it as a pretext to push back filing their section 5 notice (explained next).
Cipa section 5: notice from Trump
After the classified discovery is complete, section 5 requires the Trump legal team to file a notice specifying the precise classified information they intend to disclose at trial, including a “brief description of the classified information”.According to legal experts, the defense at this juncture typically files a notice that the government finds too vague – a problem because it reduces the notice to “graymail” in writing – and the Trump legal team could do the same in this case.In that event, the government would have to ask Cannon to force Trump to produce a more specific section 5 notice, pushing back the proposed deadline of 12 September multiple weeks after adding up the delays in section 4 and 5.
Cipa section 6(a): trial admissibility
Twenty-one days after Trump’s section 5 notice, the government has said it would be ready to file a motion asking Cannon to schedule a hearing under section 6(a) of the statute to adjudicate the relevance and admissibility of the classified information Trump wants to disclose at trial.The government then suggests the Trump legal team get two weeks to file a response to the section 6 motion, for the government to get a week to file a reply to Trump’s response, and for Cannon to schedule the hearing to come seven days after the government’s reply.The proposed timetable suggests the hearing takes place on 31 October, though earlier cumulative delays may push it back months, potentially to December.At the hearing, Cannon would consider whether the Trump legal team needs the classified information that it outlined in its section 5 notice to make an effective defense against any potential objections from prosecutors who might want to limit the extent of the disclosure at trial.Cannon would make a determination on each item of classified information. Her final ruling might not come down for days after the hearing, not least because she may choose to look through all of the classified documents and classified discovery herself to reach a decision.
Cipa section 6(c): redactions for trial
If Cannon decides in her discretion that Trump can use all the classified information he wants at trial, section 6(c) says the government can propose to Cannon that Trump instead use unclassified “substitutes” or, more commonly, redacted versions of the documents.The substitutes can either be a statement admitting relevant facts that the classified information would prove, or a summary of the classified information instead of the classified documents themselves.But Trump could challenge any redactions on the basis that a jury could draw a prejudicial inference from them – they might see the redactions as evidence the document is sensitive – and Cannon is not required to accept the government’s proposal for substitutions.
Cipa section 7: final appeals
If Cannon rejects restrictions sought by the government, prosecutors can appeal under section 7 to the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit. If the appeals court also rules against the government, the attorney general must decide whether to continue the prosecution or drop elements of the case.The proposed timetable from the government suggests a section 6 hearing on 5 December. But the holidays and potential challenges from Trump may push a hearing back into the start of 2024. A final decision about what Trump can use at trial might not come until weeks afterwards. More

The United States has taken fresh aim at Russia’s Wagner group, imposing sanctions on companies it accuses of engaging in illicit gold dealings to fund the mercenary force.In a statement on Tuesday, the US treasury department said it slapped sanctions on four companies in the United Arab Emirates, Central African Republic and Russia it accused of being connected to the Wagner Group and its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin.The companies engaged in illicit gold dealings to fund the militia to sustain and expand its armed forces, including in Ukraine and some countries in Africa, the treasury said.“The Wagner group funds its brutal operations in part by exploiting natural resources in countries like the Central African Republic and Mali,” the treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Brian Nelson, said in a statement.“The United States will continue to target the Wagner Group’s revenue streams to degrade its expansion and violence in Africa, Ukraine, and anywhere else.”The Wagner Group did not immediately respond to the US allegations.The measures against the Wagner group had been previously planned but were briefly put on hold as US officials sought to avoid appearing to favor a side in a power struggle between the mercenaries’ chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and Russian president Vladimir Putin.Wagner, whose men in Ukraine include thousands of ex-prisoners recruited from Russian jails, has grown into a sprawling international business with mining interests and fighters in Africa and the Middle East.Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said this week “private military contractors” would remain in Central African Republic (CAR) and Mali, the two countries in sub-Saharan Africa where Wagner has the biggest presence. The group has been accused of widespread atrocities in both countries.The State department spokesman, Matthew Miller, previewing the sanctions earlier Tuesday, renewed his criticism of the Wagner mercenaries, who have been accused of wide abuses in Africa.“We believe that everywhere that Wagner goes, they bring death and destruction in their wake. They hurt local populations, they extract minerals and extract money from the communities where they operate,” Miller told reporters.“And so we would continue to urge governments in Africa and elsewhere to cease any cooperation with Wagner,” he said.The United States has previously imposed sanctions on Wagner and Prigozhin.The companies hit with sanctions on Tuesday included Central African Republic-based Midas Ressources SARLU and Diamville SAU, Dubai-based Industrial Resources General Trading and Russia-based Limited Liability Company DM.The United States also issued an advisory highlighting risks raised by gold trade in sub-Saharan Africa due to what it said was increasingly concerning reporting related to the role of illicit actors, including the Wagner Group. More

From 6h agoThe impacts of the supreme court’s ruling in Moore v Harper extend to redistricting, and beyond.Its most immediate effect is to preserve longstanding norms over state courts’ ability to weigh in on legislatures’ actions when it comes to federal elections, as the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:
The 6-3 decision in Moore v Harper is a blow to North Carolina Republicans who had asked the court to embrace the so-called independent state legislature theory – the idea that the US constitution does not allow state courts to limit the power of state legislatures when it comes to federal elections. Such a decision in the case would have been a major win for Republicans, who control more state legislatures than Democrats do. Some of the conservative justices on the court had urged the bench to embrace the idea.
“We will have to resolve this question sooner or later, and the sooner we do so, the better,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a dissent at an earlier stage in the case that was joined by Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas. “If the language of the elections clause is taken seriously, there must be some limit on the authority of state courts to countermand actions taken by state legislatures when they are prescribing rules for the conduct of federal elections.”
The court’s decision means that state courts can continue to weigh in on disputes over federal election rules. State courts have become increasingly popular forums for hearing those disputes, especially after the US supreme court said in 2019 that federal courts could not address partisan gerrymandering.
But Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political science professor focusing on American elections, sees broader implications in the justices’ rejection of the fringe independent state legislature (ISL) theory, which Republican lawmakers from North Carolina has asked them to endorse in the case:Here’s more from Sam on the case:A New York appeals court has ordered that Ivanka Trump be dismissed from a civil fraud case filed by New York attorney general Letitia James against Donald Trump, the Trump Organization and three of his adult children.James’ lawsuit, filed last September, accused Trump of lying from 2011 to 2021 about the value of his properties, including his Mar-a-Lago estate and Trump Tower penthouse, as well as his own net worth, to receive favorable loans. The lawsuit alleged that Trump’s children were involved in a conspiracy to commit the crimes.The lawsuit seeks at least $250m in damages from the former president, his sons Donald Jr and Eric, his daughter Ivanka, the Trump Organization and to stop the Trumps from running businesses in New York.The appellate division in Manhattan, in today’s unanimous ruling, dismissed the claims brought against Ivanka Trump by James, noting that those claims were barred by New York’s statute of limitation. It said:
The allegations against defendant Ivanka Trump do not support any claims that accrued after February 6, 2016. Thus, all claims against her should have been dismissed as untimely.
The appeals court has returned the case to the state supreme court judge presiding over the case to determine whether the claims against the other defendants should be limited.A trial is scheduled to begin 2 October.Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley has said “what’s happening with the Uyghurs is disgusting” after her rival, Francis Suarez, appeared not to have heard of the persecuted Chinese minority group.Haley, during a foreign policy speech about China in Washington, said:
We promised never again to look away from genocide, and it’s happening right now in China. And no one is saying anything because they’re too scared of China.
Part of American foreign policy should always be that we fight for human rights for all people. And what’s happening with the Uyghurs is disgusting. And the fact that the whole world is ignoring it is shameful.
Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy has insisted that Donald Trump is “stronger today than he was in 2016”, hours after he appeared to question whether the former president was the strongest GOP nominee to win the 2024 election.McCarthy, in an interview with Breitbart News, said:
As usual, the media is attempting to drive a wedge between President Trump and House Republicans as our committees are holding Biden’s DoJ accountable for their two-tiered levels of justice.
He pointed to a Morning Poll published today that showed Trump with a three-point lead over Joe Biden in a hypothetical head-to-head match. McCarthy said:
Just look at the numbers this morning – Trump is stronger today than he was in 2016.
It comes after he was asked, in an interview earlier today with CNBC, whether Trump could win an election despite all his legal troubles. McCarthy replied:
Yeah he can … the question is, is he strongest to win the election? I don’t know that answer.
Investigators from special counsel Jack Smith’s office are set to interview Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in Atlanta, as part of the federal investigation into efforts by Donald Trump and his advisers to overturn the 2020 election results.Raffensperger’s interview, first reported by the Washington Post, will be his first with US justice department investigators.Smith’s office subpoenaed Raffensperger back in December, but NBC News reports that the move was for documents and not for him to appear or testify in person.In a phone call after the 2020 election, Trump demanded Raffensperger “find” the votes needed for him to win Georgia – a state Joe Biden won by nearly 12,000 votes.Trump told Raffensperger:
All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.
A new federal law that requires employers to provide accommodations to pregnant and postpartum employees took effect on Tuesday, providing protections to millions of eligible people.The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act requires that employers with more than 15 workers provide “reasonable accommodations” to people who are pregnant, postpartum or have a related medical condition, NBC News reported.The legislation covers accommodations for a myriad of pregnancy-related conditions including morning sickness, pregnancy loss and postpartum depression.Examples of possible accommodations include being able to sit and drink water, having flexible hours and having uniforms that fit properly, according to information from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.Accommodations could also include time off for childbirth recovery and time to access an abortion, the 19th News reported.Under the act, a pregnant employee can request accommodations from their employer, with both parties having a discussion on if the accommodation can be granted.Read the full story here.Kamala Harris is out with a statement cheering the supreme court’s decision in the Moore v Harper case out of North Carolina, but acknowledging that more must be done to safeguard voting rights across the United States.Here are the vice-president’s thoughts:
Voting is the bedrock of our democracy. Today’s decision preserves state courts’ critical role in safeguarding elections and protecting the voice and the will of the American people. We know that more work must to (sic) be done to protect the fundamental right to vote and to draw fair maps that reflect the diversity of our communities and our nation. The President and I will keep fighting to secure access to the ballot box, but we cannot do this alone. We continue to call on Congress to do their part to protect voters and our democracy and pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.
If the supreme court had ruled in favor of Republicans in a major election law case decided today, it would have represented a “truly horrible” blow to American democracy, a congressman from North Carolina, the state at the heart of the decision, said in an interview.Speaking to the Guardian’s US politics live blog, Wiley Nickel, a first-term Democratic House representative from the Raleigh area, said that while the decision handed down might represent a victory in the battle against partisan gerrymandering, he still expects Republicans who control North Carolina’s state legislature to proceed with redrawing congressional maps to their advantage.“We had something truly horrible that didn’t happen and it would have been the beginning of the end of democracy in America if the court had sided with Tim Moore in the Moore v Harper case,” Nickel said, referring to the Republican speaker of the state’s House of Representatives whose name was on the supreme court case.But because the US supreme court has now ruled against North Carolina’s Republicans and declined to endorse a fringe theory that could have prevented state courts from weighing in on federal election rules, “It’ll mean that we have a check with the courts and with our constitution … it just moves us on to the next stage of the fight to make sure that we get fair maps in this next election.”Nickel was elected last year after North Carolina’s supreme court struck down a GOP-drawn congressional map and replaced it with one that produced a 7-7 split between Republicans and Democrats in the state’s delegation following the midterm election. While Democrats still lost control of the US House, that ruling was one of many factors that helped the party’s lawmakers across the country perform better than expected.In North Carolina, the GOP has since taken the majority on its top court, which, together with the party’s control of the House and Senate, will allow it to move forward with a partisan gerrymander of the state’s congressional districts.Nickel expects that the boundaries of his district, which leans slightly Republican, will remain pretty much the same, but other Democratic congressional representatives may be at risk.“It goes back to our state legislature and they’re going to draw maps and it’s going to be, I think, bad overall for Democrats,” he said. How bad it is will be yet another factor determining whether Joe Biden’s allies are able to retake control of the House in the next election, set for November 2024.In the long run, Nickel supports federal legislation to end partisan gerrymandering, but acknowledges that among the current crop of Republicans in the House, “The majority of them right now, if anything, they’re going in the opposite direction.”He takes some solace from another supreme court ruling released earlier this month that maintains parts of the Voting Rights Act and could help Democrats hang onto some districts in North Carolina and elsewhere in the south. Nickel also noted that if the Tar Heel State’s Republicans push too hard to make maps that disadvantage Democrats, it raises the chances a legal challenge against them will succeed.“Every single time we talk about maps in North Carolina, the real question is, how greedy are they going to get? And if they get too greedy, the state courts, federal courts are going to get involved,” he said.The third “Florida Man” in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Miami’s mayor Francis Suarez, suffered an embarrassment during an interview with a conservative radio host when he was asked about the plight of the oppressed Uyghurs, a Muslim minority in China.“The what?” Suarez replied when asked by the presenter Hugh Hewitt if he would be talking about them during his campaign, reported by the Miami Herald.“The Uyghurs,” Hewitt repeated.“What’s a Uyghur?” Suarez asked.“OK, we’ll come back to that. You gotta get smart on that,” Hewitt said.“What did you call it, a Weeble?” Suarez asked at the conclusion of the 15-minute conversation.In a later tweet, Hewitt called Suarez’s interview “pretty good for a first conversation”, apart from the “huge blind spot” on the Uyghurs.In a statement, Suarez claimed he had merely misheard. “Of course, I am well aware of the suffering of the Uyghurs in China,” he claimed.“China has a deplorable record on human rights and all people of faith suffer there. I didn’t recognize the pronunciation my friend Hugh Hewitt used. That’s on me.”You can listen to the interview here.Speaking of Donald Trump and 2024, Kevin McCarthy made a curious comment this morning in an interview with CNBC.Asked if he thought Trump could win an election despite all his legal troubles, the Republican House speaker replied, “Yeah he can … the question is, is he strongest to win the election? I don’t know that answer. But can … anybody beat Biden? Yeah, anybody can beat Biden. Can Biden beat other people? Yes, Biden can beat them.”Make of that what you will. Here’s the full clip:During his campaign swing through New Hampshire, Ron DeSantis was asked about his views on the January 6 insurrection.Donald Trump has repeatedly insulted DeSantis, who is his closest rival for the Republican presidential nomination next year, but that apparently isn’t enough to earn the Florida’s governor’s condemnation of the former president’s involvement in the attack on the Capitol:Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, has also praised the supreme court’s ruling in Moore v Harper.Posting to Twitter, Pelosi said:
Today, the Supreme Court rejected a fringe, far-right assault on a sacred pillar of American Democracy: the right to vote.
With its ruling in Moore v. Harper, the Court refused the MAGA Republicans’ radical theory and reaffirmed our Founders’ vision of checks and balances.
The White House has responded to the supreme court’s ruling in Moore v Harper, calling it a “critical” move for voting rights.White House spokesperson Olivia Dalton said the “extreme” legal theory would have let politicians undermine the will of the people.Florida governor Ron DeSantis, at a campaign event in Hollis, New Hampshire, also vowed to tear down Washington’s traditional political power centers, AP reports.Asked about people who had voted twice for Donald Trump because of promises to “drain the swamp” in the nation’s capital, DeSantis replied:
He didn’t drain it. It’s worse today than it’s ever been.
He said he would take power out of Washington by instructing cabinet agencies to halve the number of employees there, adding:
I want to break the swamp.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis has vowed to succeed where Donald Trump failed and to “actually” build the wall between the US and Mexico, as the two held dueling campaign events in New Hampshire.DeSantis, at a town hall in Hollis, spoke about his new immigration policy proposal which includes calling for ending birthright citizenship, finishing the border wall and sending US forces into Mexico to combat drug cartels, AP reports.He said:
We’re actually going to build the wall. A lot of politicians chirp. They make grandiose promises and then fail to deliver the actual results. The time for excuses is over. Now is the time to deliver results and finally get the job done. More

A new report detailing intelligence failures leading up to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol said government agencies responsible for anticipating trouble downplayed the threat even as the building was being stormed, in an attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.The 105-page report, issued by Democrats on the Senate homeland security committee, said intelligence personnel at the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other agencies ignored warnings of violence in December 2020.Such officials then blamed each other for failing to prevent the attack that ensued, which left more than 140 police officers injured and led to several deaths.The US government has won hundreds of convictions against the rioters, with some getting long prison sentences.“These agencies failed to sound the alarm and share critical intelligence information that could have helped law enforcement better prepare for the events” of January 6, said Gary Peters of Michigan, the Democratic chair of the committee issuing the report, titled Planned in Plain Sight, A Review of the Intelligence Failures in Advance of 6 January 2021.Republicans on the committee did not respond to requests for comment.Last summer, a House of Representatives select committee held hearings, following a long investigation, that concluded the then president, Donald Trump, repeatedly ignored top aides’ findings that there was no significant fraud in the 2020 presidential election, which he lost.Trump continues to falsely insist he won that contest and was the victim of election fraud. Hours before the riot, Trump delivered a fiery speech to supporters, urging them to march to the Capitol as the House and Senate met to certify Biden’s win.Trump is now the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination. He and some Republican rivals have pledged to grant or consider granting pardons to rioters.The Senate committee found that in December 2020, the FBI received information that the far-right Proud Boys extremist group planned to be in Washington “to literally kill people”.On 3-4 January 2021, the report says, intelligence agencies knew of multiple postings on social media calling for armed violence and storming the Capitol. Yet “as late as 8.57am on January 6 a senior watch officer at the DHS National Operations Center wrote “there is no indication of civil disobedience”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBy 2.58pm, the report noted, with a riot declared and the Capitol in formal lockdown, the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis noted online “chatter” calling for more violence but said “at this time no credible information to pass on has been established”.In summer 2020, demonstrations were staged in several US cities after the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer. The Senate report notes that the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis was criticized then for “over-collecting intelligence on American citizens”, resulting “in a ‘pendulum swing’ after which analysts were hesitant to report open-source intelligence they were seeing in the lead-up to January 6”.The report concluded there was a “clear need … for a re-evaluation of the federal government’s domestic intelligence collection, analysis, and dissemination processes”. More

The top Trump adviser Stephen Miller advocated blowing up boats of migrants with drones, according to a new book by a former homeland security official previously revealed to be the “anonymous” author behind a famous warning about Trump White House extremes.In his new book, Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump, Miles Taylor says in April 2018 Miller advocated an attack on a ship heading for the US, saying people onboard were not protected under the constitution as they were in international waters.The passage was first reported by Rolling Stone, which said it had reviewed documentation that supported the claim.Taylor says Miller made his argument to Paul Zukunft, an admiral then commandant of the US Coast Guard.According to Taylor, Miller said: “Tell me why can’t we use a Predator drone to obliterate that boat?”Taylor writes: “Admiral Zukunft looked nonplussed. ‘Because, Stephen, it would be against international law.’”Taylor says Miller argued with Zukunft, telling “the military chief nearly 30 years his senior, ‘I don’t think you understand the limitations of international law.’”A spokesperson for Miller told Rolling Stone: “This is a complete fiction that exists only in the mind of Miles Taylor desperate to stay relevant by fabricating material for his new book.”Zukunft told Rolling Stone he had “no recollection” of the exchange as described by Taylor, but “vividly recall[ed] having a lengthy conversation with Stephen Miller regarding south-west border security in 2018”.He added: “To use deadly force to thwart maritime migration would be preposterous and the antithesis of our nation’s vanguard for advancing human rights.”Miller was a speechwriter and close adviser to Donald Trump, particularly associated with extreme policies on immigration.As Rolling Stone pointed out, Miller has often been linked to outlandish policy suggestions, including a 2019 proposal to “secure [Isis leader] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s head, dip it in pig’s blood and parade it around to warn other terrorists”.That revelation came from a book by Mark Esper, Trump’s last permanent secretary of defense, who also described Trump asking if drug labs in Mexico could be hit with US missiles.Taylor was chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security when he became “Anonymous”, the author of a New York Times column which in September 2018 caused a sensation as an insider’s account of dysfunction under Trump.Taylor published a book, A Warning, before revealing his identity and endorsing Joe Biden in the 2020 election.Regarding his account of Miller’s wish to target migrants with drone-fired missiles, Taylor told Rolling Stone: “The conversation happened.” More

Donald Trump repeatedly talked about a document on Iran that he described as having come from the “defense department” in an audio recording from July 2021 that cast doubt on his recent assertions that the material he was referring to was a stack of printed news clippings.The actual audio of the recording, played publicly for the first time by CNN and obtained by the Guardian, reveals the full extent of Trump’s discussion that was only partially included in the indictment and could make for a compelling presentation if deemed admissible at trial.The tape also included passages where Trump acknowledged that he could not declassify materials because he was no longer president.The tape was made at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey the summer after Trump left office, during a meeting with a publisher and a writer working on a memoir by Trump’s final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, according to people familiar with the matter.The discussion captured by the tape involved Trump trying to rebut reporting that the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mark Milley, feared he might attack Iran. Trump was claiming that the situation was reversed, and told participants to “look” at what he was holding.“He said I wanted to attack Iran,” Trump said on the tape, seemingly referring to Milley. “Isn’t it amazing? I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look – this was him. This is off the record but they presented me this, this was him. This was the defense department and him.“This was him. All sorts of stuff. Pages long. Let’s see here,” Trump said, appearing to shuffle papers. “Isn’t that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is highly confidential, this is secret information.”Trump added: “This was done by the military, given to me. I think we can, probably – see as president, I could have declassified. Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret” – to which a staffer responds, laughing: “Now we have a problem.” Trump then called for someone to bring out Coca-Cola drinks.Notably, the manner in which Trump referred to the Iran document at the time appears to be at odds with how he described the material in a Fox News interview conducted last week, after he was charged in the classified documents case.In the interview, Trump suggested that he was not trying to show off any “secret” or “highly confidential” documents, but he was instead referring to clippings of news articles about Milley and military plans for Iran.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“There was no document,” Trump said. “That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things. And it may have been held up or it may not, but that was not a document. I didn’t have a document per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”A Trump spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.Whether the audio recording is deemed to be admissible at trial remains uncertain, and federal prosecutors did not charge Trump with retaining an Iran document, an indication that they did not conclusively identify the material Trump discussed despite months of investigation.The admissible evidence would be limited to materials that help establish Trump’s possession of the documents was unauthorized, and that Trump retained the documents with the knowledge that doing so was illegal. More