US Politics

The first days of a new Congress are typically when the party in charge lays out its priority, and today, it’s the turn of abortion foes.The two measures the Republican-led House will consider don’t amount to the sort of draconian laws some abortion foes would like to see passed, and supporters of the procedure fear. They are not, for instance, the nationwide abortion ban Republican senator Lindsey Graham proposed last year.Rather, they target more niche aspects and consequences of the procedure. One is a resolution condemning attacks on churches, groups and facilities that work against abortion. The other is the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which is intended to protect the rights of babies born after surviving an attempted abortion. Abortion rights advocate argue their rights are already secured by a 2002 law, and just last November, voters in Montana rejected a similar measure that was on their ballots.Democrats are telling their members to vote against both measures.Republicans in the House are set to pass two measures concerning abortion later this afternoon, one a resolution condemning violence against opponents of the procedure, the other a bill meant to protect the life of babies who survive abortions. Democrats oppose both. Meanwhile, GOP officials in New York have called on George Santos to resign from Congress after he admitted to lying about his qualifications, but he says he’s not going anywhere.Here’s what else happened today:
Domestic flights resumed across the United States after all departures were briefly halted this morning by a systems failure at the Federal Aviation Administration.
The top Republican investigator in the House demanded documents from the Treasury related to Hunter Biden and other members of the president’s family. He also wants testimony from three former Twitter executives involved in the platform’s temporary banning of the New York Post after it reported on the discovery of Biden’s laptop.
Republicans tried their best to get voters riled up over gas cookstoves.
Joe Biden’s aides found more classified documents at a location he once used, though further details are scarce.
Virginia’s Republican governor is unlikely to be able to ban abortion after 15 weeks, after Democrats flipped a state Senate seat in a special election.
Another batch of classified documents has turned up at a location used by Joe Biden that is separate from the Washington DC office where the first cache was discovered in November, NBC News reports.The president has faced scrutiny ever since reports emerged this week that approximately 10 papers bearing government classification markings and dating to his time as vice-president were found at an office once used by Biden. According to NBC, the latest cache was found by aides to the president, though details of the documents’ content and how many were found were not available. NBC reports the documents were discovered after the president ordered a search for any other classified documents that may have been taken from the White House when he departed in January 2017 at the end of Barack Obama’s presidency.At 4 pm, the House is scheduled to vote on a GOP-proposed resolution and bill concerning abortion.But first, the Democrats will try to attach an amendment to the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which is meant to protect babies who survive the procedure. The proposed amendment would “prohibit government restrictions on abortion care,” according to Democratic whip Katherine Clark’s office. “This would include any limits to providers’ ability to prescribe certain drugs, offer abortion counseling services via telemedicine, or provide emergency abortion services when a delay would risk the health of the mother.” Republicans are certain to vote this proposal down.The chamber will then consider both the born-alive act and the resolution condemning violence against anti-abortion groups. Clark’s office is encouraging Democrats to vote against both, saying the resolution does not contain “any acknowledgment of violent attacks on providers or facilities that offer abortion care,” and the born alive bill “unnecessarily restates current law requiring a doctor to provide the same standard of medical care for an infant born during an abortion procedure as they would for any other infant.”Republicans have the numbers to pass both, but at this stage, the effort is more about signaling priorities to GOP voters than changing the law. When the born-alive act arrives in the Senate, it is unlikely to be considered by its Democratic leadership.The calls for George Santos to resign have spread from county level Republicans to the state party, Politico reports:INBOX: NY state GOP backs call for Rep. George Santos’ resignation pic.twitter.com/fIr0uSzDJX— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 11, 2023
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked at her daily briefing about the classified documents discovered at an office formerly used by Joe Biden, and she said… not much.The Guardian’s David Smith was in the White House briefing room to experience the illuminating exchange up close:Jean-Pierre on Biden’s classified documents: “He was surprised to find any records were there. He doesn’t know what’s in them… As he said, his team is cooperating fully with the review… We are committed to doing the right thing.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) January 11, 2023
Jean-Pierre: “This is under review by the Department of Justice. I’m not going to go beyond what the president shared yesterday.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) January 11, 2023
Reporters are wont to press, and press they did, at which point it grew a little heated:Ed O’Keefe of CBS News notes that Biden acknowledged that he would make mistakes and ask for help fixing them. Jean-Pierre replies: “We don’t need to have this kind of confrontation. Ask your question… You don’t need to be contentious here with me, Ed.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) January 11, 2023
Asked if Biden is looking into whether there might be more classified documents elsewhere, Jean-Pierre replies: “I’m just not going to speak to this. I’m going to let the process continue.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) January 11, 2023
Joe Biden has joined Donald Trump in the club of current or former American presidents who may be in trouble over classified documents. But as the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports, the two men are not facing identical peril:Donald Trump’s retention of documents marked classified at his Mar-a-Lago resort has aggravating factors that might support his criminal prosecution unlike the discovery of some documents also marked classified stored at Joe Biden’s former institute from his time as vice-president, legal experts said.The US justice department has clear criteria for prosecuting people who intentionally mishandle highly sensitive government documents, and the facts of the Trump documents case appear to satisfy more elements than in the Biden documents case.Broadly, the Department of Justice has typically pursued prosecutions when cases have involved a combination of four factors: wilful mishandling of classified information, vast quantities of classified information to support an inference of misconduct, disloyalty to the United States and obstruction.The criminal investigation into Trump touches on at least two of those elements – obstruction, where a person conceals documents with an intent to impede a government agency, and the volume of classified materials at Mar-a-Lago – unlike the Biden case, which appears to touch on none.In the case of the classified documents, it’s more serious for Trump than BidenRead moreWhile they may have momentum in the US House, anti-abortion groups continue to lose ground at the state level, with a special election in Virginia bringing the latest setback for their movement.Last night, Democrat Aaron Rouse claimed victory in the race for a vacant seat in Virginia’s state Senate, which, if confirmed, would expand the party’s margins in the chamber. It would also mean Republican governor Glenn Youngkin would not have the votes he needs to pass a proposed ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, which he unveiled last month.Abortion rights have faired well at ballot boxes ever since the supreme court last year overturned Roe v Wade. In the November midterms, voters rejected new limits on abortion or expanded access in every state where it was on the ballot.Earlier this morning in the Capitol, George Santos kept it to the point with a quick “I will not,” when asked if he would resign.He was a bit more loquacious on Twitter this afternoon: I was elected to serve the people of #NY03 not the party & politicians, I remain committed to doing that and regret to hear that local officials refuse to work with my office to deliver results to keep our community safe and lower the cost of living.I will NOT resign!— George Santos (@Santos4Congress) January 11, 2023
Ahead of the introduction of two anti-abortion measures in the newly Republican-controlled House, one House Republican said her party was “tone deaf” on the issue.Nancy Mace, of South Carolina, told NBC on Tuesday: “We have been tone deaf on this issue since the time that Roe was overturned.”Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which protected abortion rights, was overturned by the ruling in Dobbs v Jackson which the conservative-dominated supreme court handed down last June.Extensive evidence, including Republicans’ disappointing performance in the midterm elections in November, suggests the ruling was drastically out of step with public support for abortion rights, which runs around 60%.“We buried our heads in the sand,” Mace said. “We didn’t have any policy alternatives. We were not compassionate to both sides of the aisle on this argument.”Mace also told NBC her party was “paying lip service to the pro-life movement” and said anti-abortion measures introduced in this Congress were “never going to pass the Senate. It’s never going to get to the president’s desk to be signed into law.“If you want to make a difference and reduce the number of abortions with a Democrat-controlled Senate, the No1 issue we should be working on is access to birth control.”Some pertinent lunchtime reading from our columnist Jill Filipovic, as House Republicans seek to advance their agenda in the chamber they newly control…The Republican party didn’t exactly start 2023 hot out of the gate.Despite a new House majority, the Republican members of Congress spent their first few days in office in an embarrassing protracted squabble over the speakership. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who has spent the last few years assisting members of the extremist conspiracy-mongering Trumpian Republican radicals in their rise to power, found himself predictably on the receiving end of the extremist conspiracy-mongers, who wanted one of their own in charge as well as a series of rule changes. After largely capitulating to his party’s lunatic fringe, McCarthy squeaked through on the 15th vote.Now, he holds the gavel, but it’s clear he doesn’t hold his party’s confidence, and that he’s not a leader in any meaningful sense of the word. If he can’t even get his troops lined up to vote for him, how is he going to get his clearly out-of-control party in line to support even tougher votes?Which raises the question of what the party can reasonably accomplish in the House this term.Read on…Expect the Republican House to be just like the speaker debacle: pure chaosRead moreSome good news for Joe Biden – according to polling by the Economist and YouGov, his approval rating is net positive, his best such rating since July 2021:Biden’s net job approval is now positive in @TheEconomist’s polling with @YouGovAmerica: https://t.co/IVjBfI5OAY- This includes a +2 reading (47% approve to 45% disapprove) in this week’s poll- 45% approve of his handling of the economy- Biden’s best numbers since July 2021 pic.twitter.com/5ASvKye83h— G. Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) January 11, 2023
More from the Economist and YouGov, under the title “Weekly Insight”:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Two years on from the mob attack at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, a new poll from the Economist and YouGov finds that most Americans still disapprove of the insurrectionists who stormed the building. The poll finds that 64% of adults disapprove of “the Trump supporters taking over the Capitol building” on January 6, including 52% who say they “strongly” disapprove. Meanwhile 20% of adults – mostly respondents who also said they voted for Mr Trump in 2020 – say they approve. By 45% to 37%, a plurality of adults believe Mr Trump urged his supporters to engage in violence that day.So that’s reassuring. Ish.Republicans in the House are set to pass two measures concerning abortion this afternoon, one a resolution condemning violence against opponents of the procedure, the other a bill meant to protect the life of babies who survive abortions. Democrats oppose both. Meanwhile, GOP officials in New York have called on George Santos to resign from Congress after he admitted to lying about his qualifications, but he says he’s not going anywhere.Here’s what else has happened today thus far:
Domestic flights are resuming across the United States after all departures were briefly halted this morning by a systems failure at the Federal Aviation Administration.
The top Republican investigator in the House is demanding documents from the Treasury related to Hunter Biden and other members of the president’s family. He also wants testimony from three former Twitter executives involved in the platform’s temporary banning of the New York Post after it reported on the discovery of Biden’s laptop.
Republicans are trying their best to get voters riled up over gas cookstoves.
Here’s newly elected congressman Anthony D’Esposito becoming the first Republican lawmaker to call for George Santos’s resignation:Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY) becomes the first GOP member of Congress to call on Rep. George Santos (R-NY) to resign from the House. pic.twitter.com/VArdpuwLor— The Recount (@therecount) January 11, 2023
Like Santos, D’Esposito is a Republican who represents a Democratic-leaning suburban New York City district.Here’s Joseph Cairo, chair of the Republican party in New York’s Nassau county, calling for George Santos’ resignation:Nassau County Republican Chair Joseph Cairo calls for Rep. George Santos’ (R-NY) “immediate” resignation:“He’s not welcome here at Republican headquarters … He’s disgraced the House of Representatives, and we do not consider him one of our Congress people.” pic.twitter.com/fgK4t1lzC0— The Recount (@therecount) January 11, 2023
Santos’s congressional district includes part of the county in suburban New York City, and his victory in last November’s midterm election flipped it from Democratic to Republican representation.ABC News caught up with Santos at the Capitol, who said he has no plans to step down:🚨Rep. George Santos tells @rachelvscott and me he will NOT resign pic.twitter.com/vBMvotq3Y0— Lalee Ibssa (@LaleeIbssa) January 11, 2023
There’s no shortage of business on the House’s agenda, but several Republicans are doing all they can to make the gas cookstove kerfuffle last.Consider this, from Missouri’s Mark Alford: pic.twitter.com/ePzSGT9woQ— Mark Alford 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@markalfordkc) January 11, 2023
Texas’s Ronny Jackson, the former White House doctor to Barack Obama and Donald Trump, is promoting a website…:If gas stoves were really a health hazard, would “doctor” Jill Biden be using one?? I think not.https://t.co/2DQMkP2ZIy pic.twitter.com/QSH3A72Ifj— Ronny Jackson (@RonnyJacksonTX) January 11, 2023
… and employing the all-caps approach:187 MILLION Americans have gas stoves in their homes, and it will cost a FORTUNE to replace them. There’s no “science” behind this. It’s just another excuse Biden is trying to use to put MORE GOVERNMENT in your lives. HANDS OFF OUR STOVES!!https://t.co/2DQMkP2ZIy pic.twitter.com/xPxM5KwbKa— Ronny Jackson (@RonnyJacksonTX) January 11, 2023 More

‘It’s been rough’: passengers weather another day of chaos at US airportsFrom weather disruptions to computer problems to crew shortages, customers are once again caught in travel limbo After an $8bn makeover, New York’s new LaGuardia airport complex is finally an airport the city can be proud of. Unfortunately the same can not be said for the industry it serves.For the second time in almost two weeks thousands of flights were canceled across the US on Wednesday – this time because of what appears to be a snafu with an antiquated computer system. Passengers have had enough.“It’s been rough this last couple of years,” said Deb Alexis, who had traveled to New York from Orlando. “The flight was great but now there’s stress because the bags haven’t come. Seems like there’s a lot of confusion and delays nowadays.”‘A wild Christmas eve’: strangers stranded by airline chaos team up for road tripsRead moreAsked if airline travel is becoming altogether too much trouble, Danny Dividu, on his way to Georgia when his Southwest plane was canceled, said simply: “Hell yes. Now I’ve got to go back upstairs to check in again. I usually go Greyhound. Best way to go. I hate flying. It’s too much hassle, always has been.”Another day, another crisis at US airports.It might have been the cascading weather-related disruptions the US experienced over the holidays, or computer issues, scheduling, pilot or crew shortages but the outcome was familiar: customers left in a helpless state of air travel limbo.Whatever the precise cause of Wednesday’s issues, they are part of a wider set of problems for travelers, airlines and the FAA, said Robert Mann, a former airline executive who now runs the consulting firm RW Mann & Company.“The FAA runs on hardware and software that is in many cases decades old,” he said. “And it’s a multi-year effort to build and install them.”Even a small, regional failure can have knock-on effects for the entire network, he said, but this “seems to be a system failure” and travelers could expect more issues unless something is done.The FAA estimates that delayed and canceled flights cost the US economy $33bn in 2019. “Everyone – the department of transportation, the general accounting office, Congress – agree that there is a significant cost to this but nobody does anything about it,” Mann said.Congress is set to debate the funding of the FAA this year and the hearings are expected to be heated. The FAA is currently without a leader and has been since last March.Biden has nominated Phillip Washington, currently the chief executive of Denver International Airport, to the position. But his nomination has been clouded by criticism of his lack of experience in the aviation industry and ties to a corruption scandal.With Republicans now in charge of the House, Biden’s nomination looks more uncertain and the latest mess will expose the transport secretary, Pete Buttigieg, to more criticism following the chaos at US airports over the holidays.After the flight restrictions were lifted, Buttigieg said his department was not ruling out the possibility that nefarious activity was to blame for the computer system outage.“We’re not prepared to rule that out,” Buttigieg said in an interview on MSNBC. “There is no direct indication of any kind of external or nefarious activity, but we are not yet prepared to rule that out,” Buttigieg said.After the incident senator Ted Cruz, the top Republican on the Senate committee on commerce, science and transportation, called for congressional reforms to the FAA.Southwest Airlines under investigation as more flights canceled after stormRead more“The flying public deserves safety in the sky,” the Texas senator said in a statement. “The administration needs to explain to Congress what happened, and Congress should enact reforms in this year’s FAA reauthorization legislation.”Wednesday’s incident, Cruz added, “highlights why the public needs a competent, proven leader with substantive aviation experience leading the FAA”.By mid-morning, the FAA issued its fifth bulletin. “Normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually across the United States following an overnight outage,” the agency said in a statement.By then, it was too late for many passengers. Jordan Cousins, 25, on his way to Nashville on Southwest from New York’s LaGuardia, said his Southwest flight had been delayed twice and then canceled entirely.“It’s this and then it’s that. You never know. You may have a smooth flight or there may be a problem. It may be at the counter, with the plane, or something,” he said. “Plans never go as planned.”TopicsAirline industryUS politicsNew YorkAir transportfeaturesReuse this content More

George Santos says he won’t resign as fellow Republicans call on him to quitChair of Nassau county committee says Santos ran ‘a campaign of deceit, lies and fabrication’ to win third district The Republican George Santos said on Wednesday he would not resign from Congress less than a week after being sworn in, despite calls to do so from the chairman of his district committee and a fellow New York representative, amid continuing scrutiny of Santos’s mostly made-up résumé and growing calls for campaign finance investigations.In Santos’s district, reactions to brazen lies remain mixed: ‘I might let him slide’Read moreIn a tweet, Santos said: “I was elected to serve the people of the New York third district not the party and politicians, I remain committed to doing that and regret to hear that local officials refuse to work with my office to deliver results to keep our community safe and lower the cost of living.“I will NOT resign!”He was responding to remarks to reporters by Joseph Cairo, chair of the Nassau county Republican committee, who said Santos ran “a campaign of deceit, lies and fabrication” to win the third district last year.At the same time, a first sitting Republican congressman, Anthony D’Esposito, also of New York, called on Santos to quit.Santos has faced a barrage of negative coverage.He has admitted to “embellishing” his résumé, including lying about his college record – he did not attend Baruch and New York University – and saying a “poor choice of words” created the impression he worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.He has claimed a tragic link to the Pulse nightclub shooting and said the attacks on New York on 11 September 2001 “claimed my mother’s life”. His mother died in 2016.He has claimed to have Jewish roots and to be descended from Holocaust survivors.He is under investigation in New York and in Brazil, in the latter case over the use of a stolen chequebook.His Democratic predecessor in the third district has called him a “conman”.Cairo said Santos “deceived the voters of the third congressional district, he deceived the members of the Nassau county Republican committee, elected officials, his colleagues, candidates, his opponents and even some of the media.“His lies were not mere fibs. He disgraced the House of Representatives. In particular, his fabrications went too far. Many groups were hurt. Specifically, those families that were touched by the horrors of the Holocaust. I feel for them.“He has no place in the Nassau county Republican committee, nor should he serve in public service nor as an elected official. He is not welcome here at Republican headquarters for meetings or at any of our events. As I said, he’s disgraced the House of Representatives, and we do not consider him one of our congresspeople.“Today, on behalf of the Nassau county Republican committee. I am calling for his immediate resignation.”In his own statement, to Politico, D’Esposito said Santos’s “many hurtful lies and mistruths … have irreparably broken the trust of the residents he is sworn to serve. For his betrayal of the public’s trust, I call on [him] to resign”.Santos was sworn into Congress last weekend, almost a week late after backing Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, through 15 votes for speaker.Casting one vote, Santos appeared to flash a “white power” sign. He has previously claimed to be partly Black. He also told the New York Post he was “Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish’.”Another newly elected New York Republican, Nick LaLota, has called for an investigation. On Tuesday, two New York Democrats who hand-delivered a request for an ethics investigation of Santos, Daniel Goldman and Ritchie Torres, said they had heard from Republicans who supported such a step.But Republican leaders have not acted.On Tuesday, Politico reported that Republicans were discussing what to do. Santos told the site he expected to be given committee assignments. On Wednesday, asked if Santos would sit on top committees, McCarthy said: “No.”Seizing on Cairo’s remarks, Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee, tweeted that McCarthy’s “spine found a new home in Nassau county”.Harrison added: “It is shameful that a New York county party chair has to protect and defend the honor of the House of Representatives against the lies of Santos while McCarthy is too scared to even utter his name.”In Washington on Tuesday, Goldman and Torres delivered to Santos their demand for an investigation by the House ethics committee.Goldman, like Santos elected last November, said: “Santos, we have a complaint for you.”Santos said: “Sure.”In their complaint, Goldman and Torres cited “extensive public reporting – as well as Santos’s own admissions … that Mr Santos misled voters in his district about his ethnicity, his religion, his education, and his employment and professional history, among other things”.They requested an investigation of Santos for “failing to file timely, accurate and complete financial disclosure reports as required by law”.Santos’s campaign finances are the subject of a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission by the Campaign Legal Center (CLC), a non-partisan watchdog.George Santos scandal: Democratic predecessor calls him a ‘conman’Read moreThe CLC complaint questions the source of Santos’s personal wealth and the propriety of loans to his own campaign.Torres and Goldman called Santos’s financial reports for a failed run in 2020 and his win in 2022 “sparse and perplexing”, adding: “At a minimum it is apparent he did not file timely disclosure reports for his most recent campaign.”They wrote: “If Mr Santos’s 2020 and 2022 financial disclosures are to be believed, his salary increased from $55,000 in 2020 to $750,000 in 2021 and 2022, of which he gave a whopping $705,000 to his campaign.“The committee should investigate the veracity of these claims and whether Mr Santos has engaged in fraudulent activity.”Santos told reporters that though Goldman and Torres were “free to do whatever they want to do”, he was not concerned, as he had “done nothing unethical”.Asked if he had done anything wrong, he said: “I have not.”Torres and Goldman also said Santos had “failed to uphold the integrity expected of members of the House of Representatives”.TopicsGeorge SantosRepublicansDemocratsNew YorkUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesUS political financingnewsReuse this content More

US flights resuming after FAA alert system outage causes disruptionThousands of flights delayed because of problem with system that alerts pilots about hazards or changes at airports Domestic flights across the US were temporarily grounded on Wednesday morning, after an IT failure in a critical aviation safety system.The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said that the system that alerts pilots and airlines about any hazards was not functioning. The breakdown led to more than 7,800 flights being delayed and 1,200 being canceled , the flight tracking website FlightAware showed. The ground stop was lifted at 9am with the FAA declaring that operations were “resuming gradually across the United States”, but travelers were still left facing another chaotic day of air travel following severe disruptions over the holiday period.“They don’t know what the cause is,” Joe Biden told reporters after speaking to the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg. “Aircraft can still land safely, just not take off right now. They don’t know what the cause of it is, they expect in a couple of hours they’ll have a good sense of what caused it and will respond at that time.”The White House said there was no evidence of a cyber-attack but the causes of the IT failure would be investigated in full by the Department of Transportation.International US-bound flights were continuing to take off from Europe and elsewhere.The aviation regulator said its Notam (Notice to Air Missions) system had “failed” and it was working to restore it.It said: “While some functions are beginning to come back on line, National Airspace System operations remain limited.”The FAA said it had “ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures until 9am ET to allow the agency to validate the integrity of flight and safety information”.Jordan Cousins, 25, on his way to Nashville on Southwest Airlines from New York’s LaGuardia, said his flight had been delayed twice and then canceled entirely.“I’ve been here since 7am and this pushes back everything I was trying to do. First I thought it was a cyber-attack, but they said it was some kind of malfunction. So I had all sorts of curiosities,” he said.Crowley said he had noticed that US air travel had become precarious.“Travelling is coming a bit of a hassle. It’s this and then it’s that. You never know. You may have a smooth flight or there may be a problem. It may be at the counter, with the plane, or something,” he said. “Plans never go as planned.”The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said: “There is no evidence of a cyber-attack at this point, but the president directed [the Department of Transportation] to conduct a full investigation into the causes. The FAA will provide regular updates.”Wednesday’s chaos came after a troubled holiday season for air travelers. Bad weather led to the cancellation of thousands of flights, a situation compounded by issues at Southwest Airlines that led to the cancellation of thousands more.More than 20,000 flights were scheduled to depart airports in the US on Wednesday, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium, with almost 2.9m seats.The delays affected carriers around the US. American Airlines, the biggest carrier by volume, said it was working with the FAA to minimise disruption. United Airlines said it had paused all domestic flights.A Notam is a notice containing information essential to personnel concerned with flight operations, but not known far enough in advance to be publicised by other means.Information can go up to 200 pages for long-haul international flights and may include items such as runway closures, general bird hazard warnings or low-altitude construction obstacles.TopicsAir transportUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Expect the Republican House to be just like the speaker debacle: pure chaosJill FilipovicLegislatively, the Republican party seems primed to play the role of hostage-taker rather than lawmaker The Republican party didn’t exactly start 2023 hot out of the gate.Despite a new House majority, the Republican members of Congress spent their first few days in office in an embarrassing protracted squabble over the speakership. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who has spent the last few years assisting members of the extremist conspiracy-mongering Trumpian Republican radicals in their rise to power, found himself predictably on the receiving end of the extremist conspiracy-mongers, who wanted one of their own in charge as well as a series of rule changes. After largely capitulating to his party’s lunatic fringe, McCarthy squeaked through on the 15th vote.Now, he holds the gavel, but it’s clear he doesn’t hold his party’s confidence, and that he’s not a leader in any meaningful sense of the word. If he can’t even get his troops lined up to vote for him, how is he going to get his clearly out-of-control party in line to support even tougher votes?Which raises the question of what the party can reasonably accomplish in the House this term.The fact that its most ridiculous members successfully managed to hold the speaker vote hostage to their demands does not bode well for the next two years. This first-few-days drama, which played out before any new members were actually sworn in, likely only taught the radicals the simple lesson that they are at their most powerful when they sow chaos, refuse to compromise and aim not just to shut down the workings of government but to entirely burn to the ground longstanding processes, norms and institutions. This is not a group that was prone to collaboration to begin with, and now their destructive impulses have only been magnified.So what will this fringe demand the party address? Probably a laundry list of Fox News grievances, starting with Hunter Biden’s laptop; descending further into conspiracy central with investigations into or impeachment proceedings of the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas (the theory: he didn’t do enough to secure the US-Mexico border, ostensibly for some nefarious reason), and careening into full-scale crazy with inquiries into Anthony Fauci and the Covid-19 response (the theory: Covid originated in a lab, American public health officials helped cover it up, and the Biden administration’s response to a pandemic that killed more than a million Americans – a response that included zero mandatory lockdowns and limited school closures – was a vast overreach, ostensibly, again, for some nefarious reason).These investigations will, handily, give the House Republicans a ready-made excuse for why they aren’t actually getting anything done on behalf of the American people.Trump call to ‘play tough’ on debt ceiling stokes fears of chaotic CongressRead moreThe Republican party legislative agenda is likely equal parts anarchic and reactionary. McCarthy says he wants to focus on the border, crime and inflation; this is the Republican party, so I imagine that abortion will be on that list too, despite a huge voter backlash to the Republican party’s anti-abortion politics in the midterms. How much his fractured party will actually get done is a different question, especially if the far right demands a kind of ideological purity that is often incompatible with lawmaking, and holds up legislation because of it.The far-right Republican fringe has made clear that they are uninterested in compromise; many of them also do not strike one as the sharpest tools in the shed, taken in as they are by clear fabrications from Jewish space lasers to election fraud. They thrive on drama and attention, and have learned – as every petulant child does – that throwing a tantrum is a great way to get the adults’ attention. That is not a recipe for the boring nitty-gritty of penning and passing legislation. It is, however, a recipe for a series of loud and public fights, some participants in which may be carrying loaded guns in a chamber that just removed its metal detectors.It is hard to imagine that these deranged cats will be anything but impossible to herd.Which would frankly be just as well. The Republican party vision for the country remains unclear – the party infamously did not release a platform in the last presidential election, instead simply pledging fealty to the mercurial whims of Donald Trump – but when they do get into the meat of legislating, their ideas go from simplistic-bonkers to evil.For example: the far right wants to dismantle the IRS and get rid of income-based taxation. They are clear that they would allow the country to default on our national debt, which would be nothing short of disastrous.Or take immigration: McCarthy says that the border needs to be “secure” before he will allow a bill to address an overburdened immigration system that people on both sides of the aisle agree isn’t working. But the Republican party will simply never agree that the border is appropriately “secure” under a Democratic president, and members have made quite clear that they are willing to abuse and refuse entry to desperate people legitimately seeking asylum. This is, after all, the party of family separation at the border; is there a line they won’t cross when it comes to cruelty toward immigrants?Legislatively, the Republican party seems primed to play the role of hostage-taker rather than lawmaker. Joe Biden is still the president, and he’s not going to sign a radical abortion ban or wildly cruel anti-immigrant provision. And so the next two years will likely be a carnival of deranged and politicized investigations, congressional showboating and financial crises caused by obstinate know-nothings.In other words, the rest of 2023 is going to look a lot like the first few days of the Republican majority in the House: an abject disaster.
Jill Filipovic is the author of the The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness
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I survived Guantánamo. Why is it still open 21 years later?Mansoor AdayfiA generation was born and came of age since the prison opened. Four US presidents have served. Yet 35 men remain there The US prison at Guantánamo Bay opened 21 years ago this Wednesday. For 21 years, the extrajudicial detention facility has held a total of 779 men between eight known camps. In two decades, Guantánamo grew from a small, makeshift camp of chainlink cages into a maximum-security facility of cement bunker-like structures that costs close to $540m a year to operate.Twenty-one years is a long time – a generation was born and came of age in that time. Four American presidents have served. The World Trade Center was rebuilt.During that time, the US military, the CIA and other intelligence agencies experimented with torture and other human rights violations. Soldiers and even leaders committed war crimes. The US Congress researched, wrote and released a report documenting torture, abuse and inhumane treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo and at black sites around the world, while also making it impossible to close Guantánamo.Of those 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo, we know that nine died there; 706 have been released or transferred out; 20 have been recommended for transfer but remain there; 12 have been charged with crimes; two have been convicted; and three will be held in indefinite law-of-war detention until someone demands their release.I was 19 when I was sent to Guantánamo, I arrived on 9 February 2002, blindfolded, hooded, shackled, beaten. When soldiers removed my hood, all I saw were cages filled with orange figures. I had been tortured. I was lost and afraid and confused. I didn’t know where I was or why I had been taken there. I didn’t know how long I would be imprisoned or what would happen to me. No one knew where I was. I was given a number and became suspended between life and death.I didn’t know a lot about America. I knew it was supposed to be a land of laws and opportunity. Everyone wanted to live there. We all believed our detention would be short. We hadn’t done anything. They couldn’t keep us long without someone caring. I never could have imagined that I would spend eight years in solitary confinement, that I would be held for 15 years and released without ever being charged with a crime.I turned 40 recently, and even though I am a grown man I still feel like the 19-year-old who first arrived at Guantánamo. In one sense, I came of age there – learning how to protest my detention, how to use my body to hunger strike, how to resist. I think about my time there a lot. While my childhood friends went to university, married, got jobs and began their lives, I fought prison guards who harassed me while I tried to pray.In Guantánamo’s early days, when it was just an undeveloped prison, a baby really, we all had questions: when would we be released? Why were interrogations getting worse? Why didn’t anyone believe what we told them? But we weren’t the only ones with questions. Young guards wanted to know what they were doing there, who we were, and why some leaders said we were the “worst of the worst” terrorists while other leaders called us nobodies or dirt farmers.I think Guantánamo itself had the same questions. I think Guantánamo wanted to know what kind of place it would become, how long it would be used, if it would be useful.We all waited for those answers, year after year, as we grew older. I grew a beard and my hair turned gray. Guantánamo rusted, peeled, decayed; Camp X-Ray, the first camp, became overgrown with weeds and grass. Guards rotated out and so did camp leaders. Guards who were kind to us were often demoted or punished or left Guantánamo confused about the conflict between their official duty and what they knew was right and wrong. General Miller, the architect of what the US calls “enhanced interrogation” and everyone else calls torture, went to Iraq and Abu Ghraib. Some prisoners were released. Some – like Yassir (21 years old), Ali (26), and Mani (30) – died violently and mysteriously in custody.The years passed like chapters in a book, and with each new chapter we thought our questions would be answered or at least that the chapters would change. There were new beginnings and new phases, but the story remained the same: interrogations continued. So did our inhumane treatment and religious harassment.Each chapter grew darker as we lost touch with the stories of our lives before Guantánamo. When we were taken to Guantánamo, we were fathers, sons, brothers, and husbands; we had families, dreams, and lives in the outside world. But at Guantánamo we were just numbers, animals in cages, totally cut off from the world we knew; we were caught in an endless loop of interrogations trying to get us to admit that we were al-Qaeda or Taliban fighters. We lived Guantánamo’s lawlessness and abuses, we watched Guantánamo grow and evolve, while our story remained stuck.We became Guantánamo and so did our stories. We resisted and protested our arbitrary and indefinite detention, we fought and went on hunger strikes to make the world hear us, see our suffering, and know our humanity. We also had moments of happiness, creativity, and brotherhood. We sang, danced, joked and laughed. We created art. We became brothers and friends, even with some of the guards and camp staff who treated us like we were human. We gradually lost touch with our old selves until Guantánamo became our life, our world, our only story.As Guantánamo grew older, stronger, and more permanent, we grew older, too, but weaker, more fragile, still bound within its cages. We heard that some people around the world protested our imprisonment and our torture and campaigned to close Guantánamo. That gave us hope and made us feel that we had not been forgotten. But others, like politicians outside of Guantánamo, learned to use the prison to create their own false stories – stories that feasted on us to create fear. They kept Guantánamo open.Toward the end of my time, Guantánamo had grown, in some respects, more mature and more open. We had changed too; we had reconnected with the outside world. We tried to reclaim those parts of ourselves that had been taken away and lost. I took classes and created art. I learned English and wrote stories about Guantánamo. After 15 years, I worried that I wouldn’t survive in the world once I left. I had grown up there and become a man. Guantánamo is what I knew. It’s where my friends were.I thought that by leaving, I would finally be able to write new chapters, ones that changed and had a good ending. I would end the story the way I wanted to: Guantánamo would become just a memory; I would move on, go to school, get married, start my life. But the prison didn’t want to let go. It surprised me with a new story.Like me, hundreds of men have been released from Guantánamo. Some went home to their countries and to their families. Many were sent to places they don’t know – Uruguay, Kazakhstan, Slovakia. I was sent to Serbia, where I didn’t have friends or family and didn’t speak the language. We have tried to create our own stories in these new places, ones without Guantánamo. But Guantánamo won’t let us go. We live with the stigma of having been held there.Thirty-five men remain there. President Biden has quietly worked to wind down the prison camp, but without cooperation from the US Congress, Guantánamo will remain open.For years now, former prisoners, activists, lawyers and journalists have been working to write Guantánamo’s final chapter, one that ends with justice, accountability, reconciliation, and the closure of the prison. Let’s make that happen, so that in one year, we can write a new story about life after Guantánamo.
Mansoor Adayfi is an artist, advocate, and former Guantánamo prisoner, released in 2016 after being detained without charge or trial for more than 15 years. He is the author of the memoir Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo
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AnalysisIn the case of the classified documents, it’s more serious for Trump than BidenHugo Lowell in WashingtonThe former president’s retention of papers at Mar-a-Lago appears to satisfy more criteria for prosecution than the find at Biden’s institute Donald Trump’s retention of documents marked classified at his Mar-a-Lago resort has aggravating factors that might support his criminal prosecution unlike the discovery of some documents also marked classified stored at Joe Biden’s former institute from his time as vice-president, legal experts said.The US justice department has clear criteria for prosecuting people who intentionally mishandle highly sensitive government documents, and the facts of the Trump documents case appear to satisfy more elements than in the Biden documents case.Broadly, the Department of Justice has typically pursued prosecutions when cases have involved a combination of four factors: wilful mishandling of classified information, vast quantities of classified information to support an inference of misconduct, disloyalty to the United States and obstruction.The criminal investigation into Trump touches on at least two of those elements – obstruction, where a person conceals documents with an intent to impede a government agency, and the volume of classified materials at Mar-a-Lago – unlike the Biden case, which appears to touch on none.The obstruction applies particularly to Trump because of his repeated refusal to fully surrender classified documents, including when he only partially complied with a grand jury subpoena issued in May demanding any classified materials, that led to the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago last August.And Trump for months also resisted conducting a search for any classified documents that the justice department suspected were still in his possession even after the FBI seized hundreds of classified materials, only for that second search to turn up at least two more classified documents.By contrast, the classified documents found last year at the University of Pennsylvania’s Biden Center for Diplomacy in Washington, where he was an honorary professor until 2019, were returned to the National Archives as soon as they were discovered when the office was being closed down.The Trump documents case also significantly differs from the Biden documents case over the sheer quantity and scattered nature of classified materials that were potentially exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct, the legal experts noted.Trump had kept hundreds of classified documents across his office and a storage room at Mar-a-Lago, as well as a separate storage unit in Palm Beach, Florida, compared with 10 classified documents found at the UPenn Biden Center in downtown Washington.Taken together, the aggravating factors of Trump’s partial compliance with the grand jury subpoena – that led the justice department to believe Trump was actively concealing documents – and the number of classified materials at Mar-a-Lago make his case more perilous, the legal experts said.“These cases typically are charged criminally only when an aggravating factor is present,” former US attorney Barb McQuade said of classified documents investigations. “The key difference with Trump is that two of the four are well met, and that is willful violation and obstruction of justice.“The two factors that are present for Trump do not appear to be present in the Biden case, and so for that reason, I would say that these cases are very different,” McQuade said, adding that if she was the US attorney reviewing the Biden case, she would decline to prosecute the current president.The two cases do share a notable similarity: both the Trump classified documents and the Biden classified documents were found commingled with other, non-classified materials, which can be an indicator of when a defendant would have been aware of their presence.For Trump, the commingled non-classified materials were dated after the end of his presidency, suggesting he had access to the classified documents when he was no longer authorized. For Biden, the commingled materials were dated no more recently than 2016, when he was still the vice-president.TopicsDonald TrumpJoe BidenMar-a-LagoUS politicsanalysisReuse this content More

Lawyers who enabled Trump in election plot face heightened risk of charges House panel refers John Eastman, Jeff Clark, Rudy Giuliani and Kenneth Chesebro to DoJ for offering Trump bogus legal coverFour lawyers who gave Donald Trump erroneous legal advice that aided his drive to overturn the 2020 US election now face heightened prospects of criminal charges after a House panel released an exhaustive report on the January 6 insurrection, and referred the lawyers for possible prosecution to the justice department, say ex-federal prosecutors.Brazil’s failed coup is the poison flower of the Trump-Bolsonaro symbiosisRead moreJohn Eastman, Jeff Clark, Rudy Giuliani and Kenneth Chesebro played overlapping roles, offering Trump bogus legal cover that included promoting a fake electors ploy to replace electors Joe Biden won with ones for Trump, in an effort to block Congress from certifying Biden on 6 January.The lawyers’ actions and schemes were cited in an 845-page report last month by the House select committee investing the events of 6 January, and in the referrals to the justice department, for giving various types of legal support to Trump that enabled parts of his attempted coup.The report accused Trump of criminally engaging in “a multi-part conspiracy”, and cited four criminal offenses: making false statements, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and aiding or comforting insurrection, all of which were referred to the DoJ for prosecution.The specific referrals to the DoJ differ somewhat for the four lawyers. All of them were referred for conspiring to defraud the United States. Except for Giuliani, the other three were referred for conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, a reference to Congress certifying Biden’s win on 6 January.Several legal schemes devised by the lawyers to further Trump’s botched coup were detailed in the referrals and in the panel’s exhaustive report. For instance, Eastman, a law professor in California, authored a “coup memo” that suggested avenues the former vice-president Mike Pence could take to help Trump reverse his election loss, including unilaterally throwing out certain state electoral college votes.Along with Giuliani, Eastman also addressed the “Stop the Steal” rally immediately before the Capitol attack, where he floated a baseless conspiracy theory about “secret folders” in voting machines that helped cast votes for Democrats.The panel’s report and referrals noted, too, that Clark, who was acting head of the DoJ’s civil division, “stands out as a participant in the conspiracy” to defraud the United States. The report cited evidence that Clark drafted a letter with false information urging some state officials to name new slates of electors, as part of a plan that involved Trump installing Clark as acting attorney general at the DoJ.Last summer, Clark and Eastman had their cellphones seized by federal agents, in an early indication of the serious scrutiny prosecutors were affording them.Giuliani, who served as Trump’s personal attorney and pushed his false claims about widespread election fraud, was subpoenaed by the US attorney in DC in November to testify and provide documents about his payments from Trump and his campaign, according to a Reuters report this week.Although the House panel’s referrals to the DoJ are only recommendations and do not require filing charges against the lawyers, former prosecutors said the extensive evidence that they conspired with Trump to stop Biden from taking office could help spur DoJ legal action against them.“The corrupt involvement of lawyers in various aspects of the January 6 insurrection is surely one of the low points in the history of the legal profession in America,” said former DoJ inspector general Michael Bromwich.“From filing bogus lawsuits, to trying to hijack the justice department, to devising the fake electors scheme – lawyers were at the center of the illegitimate attempts to keep Donald Trump in power. Any lawyer who cares about the reputation of the profession should be disgusted at their behavior, and hope they will be held accountable by the very legal system they abused.”Other former prosecutors offered scathing views about Trump’s legal loyalists.“While professional status often shields lawyers from criminal liability, I would expect prosecutors to use it as a sword here: this crew knew congressional procedures and concocted an attack on the weak spots, drawing in many others who knew far less,” said Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor who is now a professor at Columbia law school.“While there may be prudential reasons not to make Trump a criminal defendant, those don’t argue against charging this group with a conspiracy to defraud the United States. The broad title of that offense doesn’t often capture the conduct of defendants charged with it, but it certainly does here, And a full factual presentation of this conspiracy might also reveal Trump’s own role.”Similarly, Michael Zeldin, an ex-DoJ prosecutor, said: “The Jan 6 committee’s referrals to the DoJ regarding the role Trump-aligned attorneys played in the run-up to the assault on the Capitol laid out a compelling case.”“[The] DoJ now has to test that evidence against a standard of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to determine whether indictments are warranted,” he added.Eastman and the other lawyers accused in the House panel’s referrals to DoJ have all denied improper conduct. But well before the panel’s referrals and report, evidence was mounting about the sizable roles Eastman and the other lawyers played in promoting Trump’s conspiracy to block Biden from taking office.Federal judge David Carter last March in a key ruling involving Eastman, stated that Trump “more likely than not” broke the law in his weeks-long drive to stop Biden from taking office.“Dr Eastman and President Trump launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history,” Carter wrote in a civil case that led to an order for Eastman to release over 100 emails he had withheld from the House panel.The panel last year also heard stunning testimony from Greg Jacob, Mike Pence’s counsel. Jacob testified that Eastman acknowledged to him that he was aware that his efforts to get Pence to reject Biden’s winning electoral college count would violate the Electoral Count Act, and that Trump, too, was informed it would be unlawful for Pence to block Biden’s certification.Clark’s role in trying to help Trump promote false claims of election fraud also prompted strong condemnation at a House panel hearing last year. Former acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue was scathing in recounting Trump’s efforts to replace the acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, with Clark in late December 2020, to increase pressure on state legislators to reject Biden electors by pushing baseless charges of widespread fraud.Donoghue testified that he warned Trump at a bizarre 3 January White House meeting that drew Rosen, Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone and other top lawyers. Elevating Clark to be acting AG would spark mass resignations, and Clark would be “left leading a graveyard”, at the DoJ, Donoghue saidCipollone, who testified before a federal grand jury last fall, also threatened to resign if Trump replaced Rosen with Clark.Former Georgia US attorney Michael Moore said he believes the panel assembled a “substantial” case against some of Trump’s leading lawyer loyalists, who “were actually involved in an unprecedented and unlawful effort to overturn the election, providing fallacious legal arguments as part of the conspiracy”.“A lawyer who tells his client how to crack open the vault is just as guilty as the robber who enters the bank,” Moore added.Still, Richman cautioned that DoJ prosecutors face challenges before charging any of the lawyers.“I suspect prosecutors would want to more clearly nail down the degree to which these lawyers were truly aware that their theories lacked the slightest factual support or legal basis. It helps, but may not be enough, that many around them were saying that.”Regardless of whether or not the DoJ charges some of the lawyers, they all should suffer professionally for scheming with Trump, Bromwich stressed.“Although it’s not yet clear which of the lawyers can be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal prosecutions, they all should become outcasts in their chosen profession, and at a minimum never practice law again.”TopicsUS Capitol attackJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsRudy GiulianiDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More