US Politics

The last four Roman Catholic archbishops of New Orleans went to shocking lengths to conceal a confessed serial child molester who is still living but has never been prosecuted, a Guardian investigation has found.Upon review of hundreds of pages of previously secret church files, the Guardian has uncovered arguably the most complete account yet about the extremes to which the second-oldest Catholic archdiocese in the US went to coddle the admitted child molester Lawrence Hecker.Back in 1999, Hecker confessed to his superiors at the archdiocese of New Orleans that he had either sexually molested or otherwise shared a bed with multiple teenagers whom he met through his work as a Roman Catholic priest.The admitted conduct occurred during a 15-year period, beginning in the mid-1960s, which Hecker says “was a time of great change in the world and in the church, and I succumbed to its zeitgeist”. In a two-page statement given to local church authorities serving a region with about a half-million Catholics, Hecker says, “It was a time when I neglected spiritual direction, confession and most daily prayer.”Hecker confessed to the misconduct or abuse of seven teenagers between about 1966 and 1979, including “overtly sexual acts” or “affectionate … sex acts” with at least two individuals. In other cases, Hecker reported either fondling, mutual masturbation, nudity or bed sharing, including once on another overnight trip to a Texas theme park.Hecker’s confession said the late New Orleans archbishop Philip Hannan spoke with him about an accusation of sexual abuse in 1988. In 1996, Hannan’s successor as archbishop, the late Francis Schulte, received another allegation which the organization deemed unsubstantiated.Hecker’s 1999 admission arrived after one of his victims came forward with another complaint to the archdiocese. The organization responded in part by sending Hecker to an out-of-state psychiatric treatment facility which diagnosed him as a pedophile who rationalized, justified and took “little responsibility for his behavior”.The facility also recommended that the archdiocese prohibit Hecker from working with children, adolescents or other “particularly vulnerable” people.But Hecker did not stop working. In fact, after a sabbatical of a few months, the church ultimately allowed him to continue until his retirement in 2002 – which happened after a Catholic clerical molestation and cover-up scandal that ensnared the archdiocese of Boston prompted worldwide church reforms.When attorneys for the archdiocese – pressured by the Boston scandal – reported Hecker alongside a handful of other clerics to New Orleans police, they only informed investigators about a single one of the cases cited in his confession. And they didn’t mention the confession at all.Law enforcement authorities have never charged Hecker with a crime, even though his number of accusers has only swelled with the passage of time. Despite transparency policies that the Catholic church generally adopted after the 2002 scandal in Boston, New Orleans’s archdiocese waited until it released a 2018 list of dozens of priests and deacons whom it considered to be strongly suspected of sexually abusing minors before it publicly acknowledged that Hecker was a predator.Notably, the archdiocese only stopped paying Hecker retirement benefits in 2020. Citing a moral obligation it had to all clerics, the archdiocese waited until after it filed for federal bankruptcy protection that year (in part because of litigation in the wake of the clergy abuse list) to stop paying these benefits to Hecker and other abusive clerics. The judge overseeing the bankruptcy ordered it.The archdiocese did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but an attorney for the organization last week said in court that the city’s archbishop since 2009 – Gregory Aymond – “is taking every step possible to protect children”.The Orleans parish district attorney, Jason Williams, confirmed that on 14 June the archdiocese turned over “voluminous documents” pertaining to Hecker. He would not say whether his office compelled the church to hand over the files through a subpoena.That production came after Williams’s office spoke with a man who alleged being choked unconscious and raped as a child by Hecker after meeting the priest through a Catholic institution, according to an attorney representing the accuser.Child rape cases in Louisiana have no filing deadlines, and they could carry life imprisonment. Yet it is not clear when or if Hecker may ultimately be charged.Hecker’s attorney, Eugene Redmann, has declined to speak with the Guardian about claims against his client. But he alluded to how Hecker was 91, said the claims were generally from “decades ago” and added that people of advanced age “lose a lot of memory”.“We will address any charges if they are brought,” Redmann said.Reached by phone last week and asked for comment on his 1999 statement to the archdiocese, Hecker paused for several moments before saying: “I am running behind on time and have to get to an appointment.”He then hung up.Read the Guardian’s full investigation here.
In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline at 800-422-4453. In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International More

With the US besieged by a rightwing culture war campaign that aims to strip away rights from LGBTQ+ people and others, blame tends to be focused on Republican politicians and conservative media figures.But lurking behind efforts to roll back abortion rights, to demonize trans people, and to peel back the protections afforded to gay and queer Americans is a shadowy, well-funded rightwing legal organization, experts say.Since it was formed in 1994, Alliance Defending Freedom has been at the center of a nationwide effort to limit the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people, all in the name of Christianity. The Southern Poverty Law Center has termed it an “anti-LGBTQ hate group” that has extended its tentacles into nearly every area of the culture wars.In the process, it has won the ear of some of the most influential people in the US, and become “a danger to every American who values their freedoms”, according to Glaad, the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization.Through “model legislation” and lawsuits filed across the country, ADF aims to overturn same-sex marriage, enact a total ban on abortion, and strip away the already minimal rights that trans people are afforded in the US.Under the Trump administration, the group found its way into the highest echelons of power, advising Jeff Sessions, the then attorney general, before he announced sweeping guidance to protect “religious liberty” which chipped away at LGBTQ+ protections.The organization counts among its sometime associates Amy Coney Barrett, the supreme court justice who the Washington Post reported spoke five times at an ADF training program established to push a “distinctly Christian worldview in every area of law”.ADF is engaged in “a very strong campaign to put a certain type of religious view at the center of American life”, said Rabia Muqaddam, senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights.“[The ADF campaign] extends to abortion, it extends to LGBTQ folks, to immigration, to what kind of religion we think is America, what kind of people we think are American,” Muqaddam said.“It’s as dramatic as that. I think we are in a fight to preserve democracy and preserve America as a place where we do tolerate and encourage and empower everyone.”ADF was founded in 1994 by a group of “leaders in the Christian community”, according to its website. Among those leaders was James Dobson, the founder of the anti-LGBTQ+ Focus on the Family organization who has said the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting, in which 20 children and six adults were killed, was a “judgment” from God because of declining church numbers.Its leaders remain involved in niche interpretations of Christianity. Kristen Waggoner, the ADF chief executive, also serves as legal counsel to Assemblies of God, a church which encourages worshippers to speak in tongues and believes in “divine healing” – the power of prayer – as a medical tool.Over the past two decades, ADF has been a main driver in dozens of pieces of rightwing legislation and lawsuits.The organization is currently behind the lawsuit 303 Creative, Inc v Elenis, which the supreme court is expected to decide this month, and which could chip away at LGBTQ+ rights. It’s a case that is classic ADF – a seemingly manufactured issue which the group has managed to chase all the way through the American legal system.The plaintiff, 303 Creative, is a website design company. 303 Creative has never made wedding websites, but its owner, Lorie Smith, claims her first amendment rights are being impinged because, if she were to start making wedding websites, she would not want to make them for same-sex couples – which would violate Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws.Another ADF obsession is abortion. It was involved, Muqaddam said, in crafting a 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi – which prompted a legal case that found its way to the supreme court – eventually resulting in Roe v Wade, which guaranteed the right to abortion, being overturned in 2022.“Alliance Defending Freedom has been instrumental in the dismantling of Roe and the ongoing efforts to eliminate abortion nationwide,” Muqaddam said.“They enacted a law that they knew was unconstitutional, they enacted it for the purpose of generating case after case after case to push it out to the supreme court until they found a court that was sympathetic to their argument,” Muqaddam said.She added: “I think that’s exactly what is happening in the LGBTQ context as well. Their goal is to limit individual rights as much as possible.”The ADF website shows the breadth of its involvement in rightwing culture wars. The organization touts its work opposing abortion, on opposing same-sex marriage and opposing trans rights.“We advocate for laws and precedents that promote human flourishing by recognizing the important differences between men and women and honoring God’s design for marriage between one man and one woman,” ADF’s website reads.But Emerson Hodges, a research analyst at the SPLC, said what ADF is really doing is attempting to “undo LGBTQ social and legislative progress”.“They go under the guise of religious liberty, and religious freedom. What that means, though, is this religious liberty to discriminate and the religious freedom to invalidate LGBTQ individuals,” Hodges said.Worryingly, there are signs that ADF, and other groups like it, are growing in influence. As Republican politicians and rightwing media fan the flames of an extremist culture war, NBC reported that donations to ADF, which is a registered non-profit, more than doubled from 2011 to 2021.As it has grown in influence, ADF’s “model legislation” has found its way into state legislatures across the country, as the group attempts to strip away LGBTQ+ rights, and the rights of trans people in particular.“Just about every anti-LGBT legislation that you’ve seen probably in the past decade was probably copied or paraphrased off of a model legislation built by Alliance Defending Freedom,” Hodges said.“They provide legal advocacy support, litigation and policy models for government officials.”An article on ADF’s website states that it is a “biblical truth” that “men and women are physically different”, and the organization has duly worked to prevent trans people taking part in women’s sports.The group sued a school district in Minnesota in 2016, and in 2021 a judge in Connecticut dismissed an ADF lawsuit which sought to prevent transgender athletes competing in high school sports. The same year, ADF backed a lawsuit brought by a teacher in Virginia who had said he would not use a transgender child’s preferred pronouns because that would amount to “sinning against our God”.In April, ADF, which did not respond to a Guardian request for comment, filed in Oregon on behalf of a Christian woman who wanted to foster children, but said she would not agree to “respect, accept, and support … the sexual orientation, gender identity, [and] gender expression” of a child placed with her, the Statesman Journal reported.“[ADF’s] obsession with targeting LGBTQ people is unhinged and drastically out of touch with supermajorities of Americans who support LGBTQ people and laws to protect us from discrimination,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and chief executive of Glaad.“Everyone should understand the truth: the ADF is simply an anti-LGBTQ group trying to abuse levers of government to push discrimination and keep their warped sense of control.“They’ve also worked to ban the right to choose, and are in cahoots with other extremist groups to oppress marginalized people. ADF is a danger to every American who values their freedoms – to be ourselves, live freely, and be welcome to contribute and to succeed in every area of society.” More

Some Republican politicians and officials fanned out Sunday to denounce Donald Trump over his handling of classified documents but also to question the motives of the US justice department in bringing an unprecedented 37-count indictment against the former president.Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who announced a run for the Republic presidential nomination last week, called Trump’s conduct outlined in the criminal charges “deeply disturbing”, adding that “we have to have a full trial here and fair one”.Speaking to CBS Face the Nation, Christie acknowledged that he had questions about politically “equitable” application of the law when it comes to politicians but that did not change accusations about Trump’s conduct.“We would not be here if Donald Trump had simply returned the documents that the government had asked him to return dozens of times,” Christie said. That conduct, he said, is “indefensible” and if true as alleged in the indictment “he is in severe legal trouble”.Trump’s record in the White House, including undermining and diminishing his own cabinet appointees, amounted to the behavior of a “petulant child”, Christie said, “because when you disagreed with him, you get called names”.Christie, who was fired from running Trump’s transition just days after Trump won the presidency in 2016, added: “Look, it’s Father’s Day today, and I want to talk to every father out there – if your child acted like this you send them to their room, you wouldn’t send them to the White House.”Separately, Christie described Trump on CNN’s “State of the Union” as a “three-time loser”, referring to his loss of a legislative majority in congress in 2018, the White House in 2020, and in the mid-term elections in 2022, which was partially seen as a referendum of Trump-endorsed candidates.According to opinion polls, Christie is running in third place among Republican voters for his party’s nomination behind Trump and Florida governor Ron DeSantis.“I will do what I need to do to be up on that stage to try to save my party and save my country from going down the road of being led by three-time loser Donald Trump,” Christie said of his nascent campaign.Meanwhile, former vice-president Mike Pence argued that the issue for Republicans underlying Trump’s 37-count criminal indictment was that the charges were brought by a politicized justice department – regardless of whether the allegations in the complaint are proved by the government.“The American people – or I will tell you among Republicans, vast majority of Republicans – have lost confidence in the department of justice,” Pence said. He vowed to “clean house at the highest levels of the department of justice” if he is elected president.Trump’s former attorney general William Barr told CBS that the investigation and charges that followed was not a situation in which Trump is “the victim or that this is government overreach”.“He provoked this whole problem himself,” Barr said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlso Sunday, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson – another of the 10 announced Republican presidential candidates – cautioned his party’s lawmakers to “back off” allegations that the justice department has been “weaponized”. Hutchinson alluded to how Trump recently promised that, if he’s elected president, he intends to appoint a special prosecutor “to go after” Joe Biden and the president’s family.“That’s called a weaponization of the justice department,” Hutchinson told ABC’s This Week. “And so let’s back off of these accusations, and let’s get back to being the party of the rule of law, of the justice system supporting law enforcement and the equal application of law.”Nonetheless, Hutchinson also made it a point to say the justice department had “made some bad decisions”.On Wednesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland contended that the justice department had followed the rules and regulations for special counsels in charging Trump. “We live in a democracy. These kind of matters are adjudicated through the judicial system,” Garland said.Trump’s former secretary of defense Mark Esper told CNN that Trump’s hoarding of classified documents was “unauthorized, illegal and dangerous”.Asked if he thought Trump could be trusted with classified information again, Esper said: “Based on his actions, again, if proven true under the indictment by the special counsel, no. It’s just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation’s security at risk.” More

US secretary of state Antony Blinken will seek China’s cooperation in curbing the production of the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl during his two-day visit to Beijing, one of several contentious issues that the high-stakes diplomatic outreach will touch on.Aides to Blinken have said the issue will feature prominently in discussions between US and Chinese officials during the trip as the US seeks China’s help in curbing Chinese manufacture of precursor chemicals used to create the drug that helped drive more than two-thirds of 100,000 American overdose deaths in each of the past two years.“Blinken held candid, substantive, and constructive talks today” with China’s foreign minister Qin Gang in Beijing, the state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said on Sunday.Fentanyl issues are a test of US-China cooperation outside pressing geopolitical disputes, including China’s threat to unify with Taiwan, technology transfers, China’s relationship with Russia, surveillance disputes and trade imbalances.US law enforcement agencies have repeatedly placed blame on Chinese companies for shipping precursor chemicals to Mexico, where cartels manufacture and ship the deadly drug to the US.In a policy speech in May last year, Blinken said, “We want to work with China to stop international drug trafficking organizations from getting precursor chemicals, many of which originate in China.”But three months later, US officials said China had cut off all talks on the issue after then House speaker Nancy Pelosi made a diplomatically unpopular visit to Taiwan.China trade officials point to US demand for opioid drugs and maintain that fentanyl precursors are ordinary chemicals sold through normal trade channels.A statement that the Chinese embassy in Washington provided to the Wall Street Journal said: “The US needs to do some serious reflections on this.”Two bills are before US lawmakers aimed at requiring China to label the shipment of precursors more clearly and for China to cooperate with the US DEA drug enforcement agency.Democratic congressman David Trone recently introduced a bill requiring customs and border patrol to improve its port inspection policies. A similar bill is before senate lawmakers.Separately, US lawmakers passed the Fentanyl Results Act that requires the state department to work with Mexican, Chinese and other foreign law enforcement “to work on detecting synthetic drugs”, according to the Maryland lawmaker.On the Republican side, Florida US senator Marco Rubio fired off a letter to Blinken last month calling for China to be held accountable for its role in the opioid epidemic.“We cannot rely on a regime that multiple observers and experts believe subordinates its counternarcotics cooperation to its geostrategic goals,” Rubio wrote.In April, the US justice department singled out two Chinese companies for sanctions for allegedly selling chemical ingredients to the notorious Sinaloa cartel that the US says have moved into fentanyl production under the leadership of the “Chapitos”, the sons of former cartel head El Chapo Guzman.The US treasury department’s office of foreign assets control announced last month announced new sanctions against seven entities and six individuals based in China, as well as one entity and three people in Mexico.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionChina’s foreign ministry said such actions could create “obstacles” for further cooperation with Washington to tackle the crisis, according to the South China Morning Post.The Mexican president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has also put pressure on Beijing to curb exports of both precursors and the drug itself. In a speech last month, Lopez Obrador countered Chinese denials of fentanyl smuggling, saying a container that recently arrived in Mexico from China was found to contain the synthetic opioid.“We already have the evidence,” he said, adding that Mexico would ask “very respectfully” for China to inform it when the contraband leaves its ports – and, if possible, seize it.But former US diplomats say Chinese cooperation on the issue may hinge on range of issues, including the sensitive theory that Covid-19 originated from a Chinese lab leak.The Joe Biden White House set a 90-day deadline in March for US intelligence agencies to report back to him on what they know about the pandemic’s origins.Biden said then that the US would work with allies to continue to press China “to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence”. The deadline for the report falls today.But there have also been signs of progress on the fentanyl issue. Last week, the US and China reportedly resumed talks on drug control cooperation.Zhao Junning, deputy director of China’s national medical products administration, met Andi Fristedt, the US Food and Drug Administration’s deputy commissioner for policy, legislation, and international affairs, in Beijing and “exchanged views on cooperation”.“Cooperation between Chinese and US drug regulatory agencies not only helps promote regulatory coordination between the two countries, but also lays a solid foundation for global cooperation in the field of drug regulation,” Zhao was quoted as saying. More

A white couple in Texas felt racially discriminated against when facing barriers to adopting a Navajo child. Backed by powerful corporate interests and other non-Native families, the Brackeens brought their grievance to the US supreme court and attempted to overturn the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA. The “rights” of individuals thereby stood against the collective rights of entire nations of people who were here first in a legal system not of their own making. The Brackeens argued that the law privileges Indians as a race over others, including white families, and is, therefore, unconstitutional. The argument reeked of “reverse racism”, a bogus notion that measures taken to protect marginalized people end up harming white people.The ICWA, however, was designed to reverse a sordid history of Native family separation that benefited white families seeking to adopt Native children. More importantly, the law guarantees that federally recognized tribes have a say in their children’s futures by keeping them with Native families. Those determinations are not based on race but on the political status of tribes and the rights of their members.Indian country blew a huge sigh of relief on Thursday when the rightwing-majority court ruled against the Brackeens and upheld the ICWA. A decision otherwise would have had dire consequences for tribes. Beyond removing protections for their children, it could have changed tribes’ status, which precedes the existence of the United States and its constitution, to that of racial minorities whose remaining lands, histories and identities would, without thought, be absorbed into the American melting pot.The 7-2 decision should be celebrated as a clear sign that not only is tribal sovereignty a constitutional reality, but it is also here to stay. Sadly, the supreme court, throughout its history, has more often done harm to Native sovereignty than protected it. “Often, Native American tribes have come to his court seeking justice only to leave with bowed heads and empty hands,” admitted Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, in his concurring majority opinion. His opinion offers a rich history of Indian child removal, examining the transition from federal Indian boarding schools to state welfare systems and adoption agencies that engaged in Native family separation.Gorsuch also writes of a 19th-century court that created the foundations of federal Indian law, upon which today’s justices draw. The court made those decisions during a time of great horror for Native people – often providing legal justification for Indigenous genocide and land seizures. In the 1823 case Johnson v M’Intosh, Chief Justice John Marshall argued that the United States inherited its right to Native lands from previous European powers. “Conquest gives a title which the courts of the conqueror cannot deny,” he wrote. The right to take lands from non-Christians and non-Europeans derived from 15th-century papal bulls known as the “doctrine of discovery”.That principle of racial and civilizational superiority hasn’t gone away and today infects the minds of jurists of all stripes. As recently as 2005, the supreme court invoked the doctrine in a ruling against a land claim by the Oneida Indian Nation. Writing against tribal sovereignty, the liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg warned against “rekindling embers of (tribal) sovereignty that long ago grew cold”.Last March, after the tireless advocacy of Indigenous peoples, the Vatican “repudiat(ed) those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political ‘doctrine of discovery’”. That rejection, however, didn’t undo the centuries of terror against Indigenous peoples and their children taken from them to be “civilized” according to Christian principles. It didn’t return the land or property the Catholic church stole from Indigenous peoples. And it didn’t overturn the fundamental premise upon which federal Indian law still rests – European conquest.In his concurring opinion in Haaland v Brackeen, Gorsuch makes a strong case defending tribal sovereignty against the overbroad powers of Congress to curtail tribal sovereignty and the overreach of states in his concurring opinion. Liberal justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor joined Gorsuch in his opinion. But they didn’t concur with his assertion that the principle that Congress has “plenary power” to divest tribes of their sovereignty conflicts with the original understanding of the constitution. Gorsuch argues that the constitution doesn’t grant the authority to limit tribal sovereignty. Yet Congress has used its powers to terminate federally recognized tribes and divest tribes of criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians.Gorsuch’s concurring opinion shows he is the most serious about engaging federal Indian law and history. How far his call for aligning Indian law with original understandings of the constitution will go is anyone’s guess. His sympathies with tribal sovereignty also show that getting good legal outcomes for tribal nations is like rolling the dice with unelected judges who hold so much sway over the survival and existence of tribal nations.But the victory in keeping ICWA and upholding tribal sovereignty doesn’t lie with Gorsuch. Leading up to this decision, tribes and activists led an effective political campaign to teach the public. Since ICWA’s passage in 1978, 14 states passed their own state versions of the law. In anticipation of ICWA being overturned, several states (including several Republican-majority state governments) recently passed protections to uphold it.The popular sentiment is on the side of tribal sovereignty. It’s now a question of what actions must be taken to ensure the collective rights of tribes are guarded against the individual and corporate desires to lay claim to Native lands, identities and children.
Nick Estes is a member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and an assistant professer of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is a journalist, historian and the host of the Red Nation Podcast. He is the author of Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance More

On Friday, a man who leaked classified national security documents to the press died at the age of 92 at his home in the San Francisco Bay Area. On Tuesday, a man who took classified documents to his Miami home that was also a resort frequented by a wide array of characters, refused to surrender them, and unleashed a flock of lies about the whole business, was arraigned on 37 felony charges.We know that Daniel Ellsberg leaked documents in the hopes of stopping a war, preventing deaths, and exposing a government that had through five presidencies lied about that war in Vietnam to justify and perpetuate it. We don’t know exactly why Donald J Trump absconded from the White House with top secret material. But there are no good explanations for those boxes stacked on the stage, in the bathroom and spilling on to the floor of a storeroom, and dragged back to another insecure location at Trump’s country club in New Jersey, or for his refusal to surrender the material when the government demanded it.The reasons to protect national security are pretty much built into the term itself. The reasons to violate national security vary widely. Whistleblowers such as Ellsberg are often high-profile figures acting on principle, not as enemies of the regime but as opponents of policies and as champions of justice or the right of the public to know. They seek to hold government accountable, often out of a patriotic loyalty trying to make the government what it should be.Ellsberg was a strong defender of Edward Snowden, who in 2013 exposed the US government’s post-9/11 violation of privacy laws to spy on US citizens. Snowden was akin to Ellsberg as an insider, an expert and a man who made a careful and considered decision about both what to leak and how. There has, of course, also been a steady trickle of spies on all sides who sold intelligence to foreign nations for money or occasionally because they were seduced by an agent of a foreign regime.Donald Trump was never a spy so far as we know, but he was a sieve when it came to state secrets and a beneficiary of leaks that seemed intended to serve exactly that purpose. In June and October of 2016, Wikileaks dumped information hacked from Democrats with the apparent intent of aiding Trump’s election. In 2020, a lawyer for the Wikileaks head, Julian Assange, told a British court: “US President Donald Trump offered to pardon WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange if he said that Russia had nothing to do with WikiLeaks’ publication of Democratic party emails in 2016.” In May of 2017, Trump spilled high-level intelligence to the Russian foreign secretary and ambassador; in the memorable picture of the meeting he looks baffled, and they look like the cats that just ate the canary.Ellsberg, who at the time of his momentous act was himself in the business of national security and held a high-security clearance, handed over the Pentagon Papers to newspapers who themselves took huge risks to publish them. As the New York Times summarized it, the documents Ellsberg and his close allies so painstakingly and surreptitiously photocopied, were “7,000 government pages of damning revelations about deceptions by successive presidents who exceeded their authority, bypassed Congress and misled the American people” in order to fight an unwinnable war against a remote and impoverished country that posed no military threat to the US.In an email in which he disclosed that he had only months to live Ellsberg reiterated: “When I copied the Pentagon Papers in 1969, I had every reason to think I would be spending the rest of my life behind bars. It was a fate I would gladly have accepted if it meant hastening the end of the Vietnam war, unlikely as that seemed.” Later in life he admitted that his action didn’t end the war, but it helped end the Nixon presidency, making an end to the war possible. He infuriated and terrified Richard Nixon, who used illegal methods to try to undermine Ellsberg. Those acts by a sitting president instead undermined the case against Ellsberg, whose criminal charges were dismissed.Ellsberg devoted the rest of his long life to speaking up about the dangers of nuclear weapons and war, human rights, the overreaches of the federal government, and further wars including George W Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. He was a beloved figure in the San Francisco Bay Area, often seen at anti-nuclear demonstrations, arrested dozens of times in protest.Ellsberg’s death and Trump’s indictment, so close together this week, remind us that national security is regularly violated, sometimes by idealists committed to the public good, sometimes by opportunists serving themselves. Ellsberg’s life is also remarkable as an example of someone who changed his mind, his life and his values – he was a cog in the machinery of war, and then he risked his future to stand against that war and the government perpetrating it.A great truth teller has left us. A liar whose mendacity has no equal remains for us to deal with.
Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. Her most recent books are Recollections of My Nonexistence and Orwell’s Roses More

Marco Rubio should have picked a better title. With his new book, the three-term senator echoes a 1991 double-platinum album by none other than Mötley Crüe: Decade of Decadence. The vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee gives no credit to the bad boys of rock.Rubio is no Tommy Lee. As a presidential candidate, in 2016, the Florida senator preened … with an invisible kick-me sign pinned to his back.Donald Trump gleefully mocked the senator, his finances and personal tics. Rubio’s relationship with credit cards, Trump called a “disaster”. He also laced into his rival for sweating and gulping down water when rebutting Barack Obama’s State of the Union address in 2013.“I need water. Help me. I need water,” Trump sneered.It didn’t matter if Lil’ Marco had larger hands than him.In New Hampshire, Chris Christie fatally blistered Rubio for a robotic debate performance. “Memorized 25-second speech” – the words will forever haunt him. In that moment, Rubio’s grand ambitions went up in smoke.Also in 2015, McKay Coppins of the Atlantic caught Rubio pinching himself over his own good fortune, exclaiming to a friend: “It’s amazing … I can call up a lobbyist at four in the morning and he’ll meet me anywhere with a bag of $40,000 in cash.”So much for the yucks to be derived from Rubio’s title. As a text, Decades of Decadence delivers little. It lacks even the (skewed) intellectual curiosity of recent books by Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley, hard-right senators of a generation just after Rubio. Instead, Rubio’s broadside reads like a laundry list of Republican orthodoxies delivered by a legislator scared Trump will upend his career still further. Less than two years ago, remember, the prospect of a primary challenge from Ivanka Trump had Rubio terrified.“I like Ivanka, and we worked very well together on issues, and she’s a US …” Rubio babbled. In the end, she punted. He was spared.But Rubio won’t (or can’t) leave well enough alone. In his new book, he compares himself to Donald Trump.“Watching the Trump campaign in action, I was reminded of my own first campaign for the US Senate in 2010,” he reminisces. “I did have an outsider spirit that allowed me to connect with voters who felt that the government wasn’t working for them.”Not in 2016, he didn’t. In his own state, Rubio lost the presidential primary to Trump by nearly 20 points.Elsewhere, Rubio compares himself to Roger Goodell.“I think of my role as a policymaker as very similar to the role of the commissioner of the National Football League,” he writes.OK. For what it’s worth, Rubio’s wife was once a Miami Dolphins cheerleader. His time as a college football player is a source of personal nostalgia.Dutifully, Rubio bashes the Bushes. He attacks the late George HW Bush and James Baker, his secretary of state, for being soft on China. He castigates Bush, who was ambassador to the United Nations and liaison to China, for referring to a Chinese leader as an “old friend”. He zings Baker as a “career public servant”.Bush served in the second world war. Baker was Bush’s “Velvet Hammer”. On their watch, the Berlin Wall fell and Kuwait was liberated. Rubio never wore a uniform and has spent most of his adult existence on the taxpayers’ dime. He is a career politician.Predictably, Rubio omits any mention of Trump prostrating himself before Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un. The normally loquacious senator also stayed mum over Trump congratulating Kim on his country’s election to the board of the World Health Organization.On the page, Rubio also takes aim at the over-extension of the US military, financialism and woke corporations. He evidently suffers from amnesia. In a March 2015 interview with Fox News, Rubio rejected the contention the Iraq war was a mistake.“I don’t believe it was,” he said, adding: “The world is a better place because Saddam Hussein doesn’t run Iraq.”Weeks later, he reversed his position.In the same spirit of expediency, Rubio now voices disgust for Wall Street and financialism, upbraids Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase for supporting Black Lives Matter, and zings Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Capital for boosting investment in China.In 2016, such forces drove Rubio’s presidential campaign. Politico blared: “Koch donors give Rubio early nod.” Other major donors included Paul Singer of Elliott Management and Ken Griffin, a billionaire hedge fund mogul and Harvard donor.“I’m really excited to be supporting Marco Rubio,” Griffin said. “He will be the next president.”Not quite. Seven years on, Griffin’s Citadel Securities is increasing its exposure in China. To Rubio, apparently, the role of business is to cough up campaign dollars – then shut up.“The best way to ensure our political system is less reliant on money is not to pass laws which infringe on fundamental rights, but rather to elect leaders who value policy and principles over politics and special interests,” the senator intones.In the race for the Republican nomination, he has not yet endorsed. That has not stopped him bemoaning Trump’s fate at the hands of the law. Last week, moments after news of the former president’s latest indictment, over his retention of classified records, Rubio delivered the following tweet:“There is no limit to what these people will do to protect their power and destroy those who threaten it, even if it means ripping our country apart and shredding public faith in the institutions that hold our republic together.”His disdain for Joe Biden is unvarnished. Trump? Less so – in public, at least.
Decades of Decadence: How Our Spoiled Elites Blew America’s Inheritance of Liberty, Security, and Prosperity is published in the US by HarperCollins More

There are two very big differences between the situation confronting Boris Johnson and that facing the man with whom he is frequently compared, Donald Trump – namely, popularity and context.Johnson is weaker than Trump. First, because he is less popular with Conservative voters than Trump is with his Republican supporters. About half of 2019 Conservative voters disapprove of Johnson’s performance in office. And at the time he left office, 40% or more rated him as untrustworthy, dishonest and/or incompetent.Things haven’t improved since. In polls conducted in recent weeks, about half of current Conservative voters have said they think Johnson misled parliament over lockdown parties, while a similar share consider the 90-day suspension he received either “about right” or “not harsh enough”.A majority of Conservative voters believe it is right that Johnson has resigned from the Commons, and less than half of them say they would like to see Johnson return as an MP.In short, about half of both 2019 Conservative voters and the party’s smaller base of current supporters take a low view of Johnson in various respects. The contrast with Trump is stark – between 70% and 80% of Republican voters approve of Trump, and more than half say they will vote for him as their candidate in the coming Republican primary contest.That brings me to the second big difference – Trump’s ability to disrupt politics is enhanced because America’s system is candidate centred, while Johnson’s ability to do the same is diminished because Britain’s system is party centred.Trump won direct personal mandates from Republican voters in 2016 and 2020, and most of them seem eager to do the same again next year. If Trump prevails in the Republican primary contest, there is little other Republicans can do to prevent him running for a third time as their candidate for the White House.The British system is very different. Johnson never received a direct personal mandate as prime minister from voters at large – there is no direct election of the executive in our system. Removing a directly elected president is very difficult. Removing a prime minister is considerably easier. If Conservative MPs had had enough of Johnson, they could – and did – remove him. The Conservative party – and Rishi Sunak, its current leader – have a lot more control over who gets to stand in Conservative colours, so it is much easier for them to keep Johnson out, particularly now he is no longer even an MP.The two factors also interact. If Johnson had Trump-style popularity with Conservatives, it would be harder and riskier to exclude him. But he doesn’t, so it isn’t.There’s also the question of whether local Conservative associations might be keener on Johnson than Conservative voters overall – perhaps keen enough to back him as a candidate, or to punish (or even deselect) their local Conservative MP if they vote for sanctions against the former PM.It is possible that Johnson has a stronger following among activists, but it is also plausible that he doesn’t. After all, these are the people who will have borne the brunt of the anger at Johnson’s antics when campaigning on the doorstep, and paid the heavy electoral price for his unpopularity in recent local election rounds.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionConservative associations have also traditionally been fairly deferential to the party leadership. They have not gone in for local deselection campaigns. While trouble on this front cannot be entirely ruled out, it seems unlikely.So some sort of Trump-style hostile takeover is unlikely. The Conservative party has higher barriers to entry than American parties, and Johnson isn’t popular enough with current or 2019 Conservative voters to fuel an uprising capable of overcoming these barriers.Johnson will no doubt retain a lot of capacity for mischief, but this is more likely to play out on the front pages of Conservative-aligned newspapers rather than in the halls and bars of local Conservative associations.Robert Ford is professor of political science at Manchester University and co-author of The British General Election of 2019 More