US Politics

Pelosi in the House: documentary captures speaker’s January 6 struggle Film by her daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, captures how Nancy Pelosi fought to preserve democracy in the dramatic hours of the Capitol attackThe struggle of Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, to preserve American democracy in the dramatic hours of the January 6 attack are captured in a new documentary film shot by her daughter.Pelosi is seen watching on TV Donald Trump’s incendiary speech to his supporters, getting rushed out of the US Capitol building and making calls to Vice-President Mike Pence and other officials from the Fort McNair military base, where congressional leaders took refuge from the mob.Despite the chaos and confusion, she is immediately clear that Trump is responsible for instigating what she describes as an “insurrection”.The blow-by-blow reconstruction of the assault on democracy is contained in Pelosi in the House, produced and directed by the speaker’s daughter, film-maker Alexandra Pelosi, broadcast on HBO on Tuesday. Some of the behind-the-scenes footage was seen in edited form during the House January 6 committee hearings.Early in the day Pelosi is in her office, wearing a face mask and adjusting her hair, as three TV screens show Trump whipping up his supporters at the Ellipse and vowing never to concede the 2020 presidential election. She tells her staff with a laugh: “Tell him if he comes here, we’re going to the White House.”Watching through a window, Alexandra’s teenage son, Paul, spots a flag-waving mob gathering ominously outside the US Capitol. Pelosi’s chief of staff, Terri McCullough, reports that the Secret Service have dissuaded Trump from coming to the Capitol because they would not have the resources to protect him.Pelosi replies defiantly: “If he comes, I’m going to punch him out. I’ve been waiting for this. For trespassing on the Capitol grounds, I’m going to punch him out and I’m going to go to jail, and I’m going to be happy.”Members of Congress adjourn to consider objections to the 2020 election results. A car has “Trump” and “Pelosi is Satan” signs on its windscreen. The chanting, horn-blowing mob attacks police, smashes windows and force its way into the building, shouting: “This is our house!”Pelosi escapes with just two minutes to spare. At 2.15pm she is escorted to safety down a staircase. She asks: “Are they calling the national guard?” A woman replies: “Yes. Yes, ma’am.”Hastening through a tunnel, she asks: “Did you reach McConnell?” – a reference to the then Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell. Someone says: “We did.” Pelosi: “And will they call the national guard?” Reply: “That’s correct.”Upstairs, the rioters are demanding to know where votes are counted. Walking through another corridor with aides around her, Pelosi evidently realises what a perilous moment this is for democracy. She says: “If they stop the proceedings, they will have succeeded in stopping the validation of the president of the United States. If they stop the proceedings, we will have totally failed.”She is then seen on a phone, telling an unidentified person: “We have got to finish the proceedings or else they will have a complete victory.”Both Pelosi and her daughter climb into the back of a black SUV so they can be taken to safety. Upstairs, her office is being ransacked by Trump supporters. One thinks he has found Pelosi’s laptop. Another asks: “You want Nancy’s pink boxing gloves?” Someone shouts with primal rage: “Fuck Nancy Pelosi!”Sitting in the moving vehicle, the speaker is livid at the disruption of Congress’s sacred duty. “So what’s the prospect? We’re gonna stay here all day, for the rest of our lives, or what? We’re here until what, until the national guard decides to come and get rid of these people?”By now the insurrectionists are inside the Senate chamber. One demands: “Do you see Nancy Pelosi?” Another asks: “Where the fuck is Nancy?” Outside, a bearded man in a “Maga” cap picks up a phone and shouts: “Can I speak to Pelosi? Yeah, we’re coming, bitch.”Pelosi is seen entering the military base at Fort McNair. As Congressman James Clyburn looks on, she says: “There has to be some way we can maintain the sense that people have that there is some security, some confidence that government can function and that we can elect the president of the United States.”Chuck Schumer, then the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, informs Pelosi: “My wife just called watching TV. There are people with guns trying to get into the House chamber.”Pelosi had to leave the Capitol without her phone so is forced to borrow others’. Sitting and studying a photo on one phone, says: “Oh, one of them is in the president of the Senate’s seat.”Schumer notes that some senators are still in hiding and pleads by phone with Ryan McCarthy, the army secretary, to send in military personnel. Pelosi, watching the carnage on CNN, speaks to Ralph Northam, the governor of Virginia: “They’re just breaking windows. This is horrendous. And all at the instigation of the president of the United States.”She tells Schumer that Northam agreed to dispatch 200 state police and a national guard unit.At 3.30pm Pelosi and Schumer speak by phone to Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general. Pelosi tells him: “Safety just transcends everything but the fact is, on any given day, they’re breaking the law in many different ways and, quite frankly, much of it at the instigation of the president of the United States.”Schumer adds sharply: “Why don’t you get the president to tell them to leave the Capitol, Mr Attorney General, in your law enforcement responsibility? A public statement they should all leave?”Rosen begins to say his team is “coordinating as quickly and as –” before getting cut off by Schumer, who demands: “No, no, no – please answer my question, answer my question!”Congressional leaders then have a call with the acting defence secretary, Christopher Miller. Pelosi says forcefully: “Just pretend for a moment it was the Pentagon or the White House or some other entity that was under siege. You can logistically get people there as you make the plan and you have some leadership of the national guard there they have not been given the authority to activate.”Then Pelosi speaks to Pence as he waits in a parking garage beneath the Capitol, where rioters chanted for him to be hanged.Taking a seat beside a plant and cabinet full of decorative plates, the speaker says she and other congressional leaders are OK, then asks: “How are you? Oh, my goodness, where are you? God bless you. But are you in a very safe –?”She says she has been told that it will “take days” to clear the Capitol and that Fort McNair has facilities for the House and Senate to meet, adding: “We’d rather go to the Capitol and do it there but it doesn’t seem to be safe.”Pelosi continues: “We’ve got a very bad report about the condition of the House floor, with defecation and all that kind of thing.”She is then seen using her teeth to help unwrap a beef jerky stick and eating while holding the phone in her right hand. She tells Pence: “I worry about you being in that Capitol room. Don’t let anybody know where you are.”Finally, Trump releases a video calling his supporters to go home, but Pelosi and Schumer are not impressed. She comments: “Insurrection. That’s a crime and he’s guilty of it.”By 5.45pm the security forces have regained control. Pence informs Pelosi and Schumer by phone that Congress will be able to reconvene. The backup plan of doing so at Fort McNair is therefore not necessary.Sitting in a vehicle heading back through darkened streets, Pelosi expresses her disgust towards Trump. “I just feel sick at what he did to the Capitol and to the country today. He’s got to pay a price for that.”Back inside the Capitol, Pelosi is informed that the sign outside her office has been taken. She responds phlegmatically: “They took the sign? We’ll get another.”Entering the office, she is warned that there is still a lot of broken glass. A gold framed mirror above the fireplace is smashed. She observes: “Boy, the staff looks scared. They’re traumatised.”The Senate reconvenes around 8pm and the House around 9pm. Pelosi watches on TV as Schumer compares the insurrection to the attack on Pearl Harbor as a “day of infamy”. At 3.48am on 7 January, Joe Biden’s election victory is ratified after all.At 9am Pelosi is in a car, telling Clyburn: “We have to stop this man, the insurrectionist in the White House.” Clyburn warns that invoking the 25th amendment would be a “complicated process” and there may not be enough time, “but there is enough time – and it’s rather simple – to tag him with the uniqueness of a second impeachment”.On 13 January, a week before he left office, the House voted to impeach Trump by a vote of 232-197 for incitement of insurrection. He was the first president in history to be impeached twice.TopicsNancy PelosiDocumentary filmsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpfeaturesReuse this content More

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Raphael Warnock was re-elected to represent Georgia in the US Senate for the next six years. Jonathan Freedland speaks to Molly Reynolds of the Brookings Institution about the significance for Democrats of having an absolute majority in the upper chamber of Congress, rather than a 50/50 split

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DoJ seeking to hold Trump team in contempt of court over classified documentsTrump office did not comply with subpoena issued in May demanding the return of all classified documents, a source says The US justice department is seeking a top federal judge to hold Donald Trump’s political office in contempt of court for not fully complying with a grand jury subpoena issued in May demanding the return of all classified documents in its possession, according to a source familiar with the matter.The department in recent weeks asked the chief US district court judge for the District of Columbia, Beryl Howell, to hold Trump’s office in contempt after prosecutors were unable to get the former president’s lawyers to designate a custodian of records to certify all records were returned.Howell has not ruled on the matter, which remains under seal. But the move, earlier reported by the Washington Post, significantly raises the stakes for Trump as he stares down a criminal investigation into unauthorized retention of national security information and obstruction of justice.The issue is to do with the Trump legal team’s reluctance to designate a custodian of records to certify that Trump is no longer in possession of any documents marked classified and thus in compliance with the subpoena that demanded the return of all such government records, the source said.If the Trump legal team could not find someone to certify under oath that all documents bearing classified markings had been returned, the department is said to have communicated, it would seek a judicial sanction.The contempt action is understood to be focused on Trump’s office because the subpoena, issued on 11 May, sought the return of all documents and writings “in the custody of Donald J Trump and/or the Office of Donald J Trump” bearing classification markings.In response to the subpoena, the Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran conducted a search of the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and identified a number of pertinent documents, and got another Trump lawyer Christina Bobb to sign a caveated certification certifying all records were returned.The certification letter, though, was heavily caveated and Bobb insisted on changes to the letter drafted by Corcoran so that it ultimately read she was making the attestation “based on the information provided to me” and “to the best of my knowledge”, the Guardian previously reported.In the weeks after the FBI seized 103 documents marked classified when officials searched Mar-a-Lago on 8 August, the justice department told Trump’s lawyers that they believed Trump was still in possession of additional documents, and sought a second assurance that no documents were left.The department never got a second attestation and recently moved to have Trump’s office held in contempt, catching by surprise Trump’s legal team which had decided to take a more cooperative approach with federal prosecutors after initially trying an aggressive approach, the source said.That appears to have deeply frustrated the government, which told Trump’s lawyers that if they refused to designate a custodian of records to sign a sworn statement attesting that all documents marked classified had been returned, it would formally seek to hold them in contempt.Should Howell hold Trump’s office in contempt – a closed-door hearing is scheduled at the US district court for the District of Columbia for Friday – it would likely be subject to some form of sanction until the former president’s office is deemed to be in compliance with the May subpoena.“Contempt is used as a coercive tactic,” said Barbara McQuade, former US attorney and University of Michigan Law School professor. “When it’s an entity, it’s often a monetary fine.”The impending court battle between the justice department and Trump’s lawyers comes after it emerged that a search of a storage unit in Florida holding boxes of material belonging to Trump turned up two more documents marked classified, in addition to the 103 found at Mar-a-Lago by the FBI.It was not clear whether the department initiated the contempt proceeding before or after the two additional documents were found. The Trump legal team is understood to have turned over the two new documents as soon as they were discovered, the source said.TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsFBIMar-a-LagonewsReuse this content More

First Gen Z congressman says he was rejected from Washington DC housingFlorida Democrat Maxwell Frost says he incurred debt from his campaign and was recently denied an apartment for poor credit Maxwell Frost, the Florida Democrat who made history last month as the first Gen Z congressman-elect, made waves on social media Thursday morning with a tweet in which he said he was struggling to find somewhere to live in Washington.First Gen Z member elected as midterms could usher in a more diverse CongressRead moreFrost wrote: “Just applied to an apartment in DC where I told the guy that my credit was really bad. He said I’d be fine. Got denied, lost the apartment and the application fee. This ain’t meant for people who don’t already have money.”He later added: “For those asking, I have bad credit cause I ran up a lot of debt running for Congress for a year and a half. Didn’t make enough money from Uber itself to pay for my living.“It isn’t magic that we won our very difficult race. For that primary, I quit my full-time job cause I knew that to win at 25 yrs old, I’d need to be a full-time candidate. 7 days a week, 10-12 hours a day. It’s not sustainable or right but it’s what we had to do.“As a candidate, you can’t give yourself a stipend or anything till the very end of your campaign. So most of the run, you have no $ coming in unless you work a second job.”Democrat New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went through something similar, Frost said, adding: “I also recognize that I’m speaking from a point of privilege cause in 2 years time, my credit will be okay because of my new salary that starts next year. We have to do better for the whole country.”In September, in Guardian interview with Frost, he described how he was financing his run for Congress, including driving an Uber, and described how he had been living with his girlfriend and sister. When they were priced out of their apartment in October, he said he was couchsurfing and sleeping in his car for a month before finding a new place.‘I’ve been Maced, I’ve been to jail …’ Can 25-year-old Maxwell Frost now be the first Gen Z member of Congress?Read more“I couldn’t go back home because my 97-year-old grandmother lives there, and this was in the middle of the Delta variant,” he said at the time.Today’s news, that Frost is struggling to secure a place to live in Washington, will likely add to his determination to address the affordable housing crisis afflicting young people in many parts of the US. After all, as journalist Andrew Lawrence wrote a few months ago: “So when he talks with urgency about the affordable housing crisis, it’s real.“There’s still a lot of barriers for working-class people to run for office,” he says. “I want to be the voice who shows how messed up it is and help demystify the process.”TopicsFloridaUS politicsUS housing and sub-prime crisisUS economyReuse this content More

House passes landmark legislation protecting same-sex marriageFinal vote was 258 to 169, with 39 Republican members joining every House Democrat The House gave final passage on Thursday to landmark legislation protecting same-sex marriage, in a bipartisan vote that reflects a remarkable shift in public opinion just over a quarter-century after Congress defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman.The final vote was 258 to 169, with 39 Republican members joining every House Democrat in supporting the bill. One Republican, Burgess Owens of Utah, voted present.Virginia restaurant cancels reservation of anti-LGBTQ+ organizationRead moreThe vote was one of the final acts of this lame-duck Congress before the balance of power shifts and Republicans take control of the House in January. The bill, which provides a degree of relief for hundreds of thousands of same-sex married couples in the US, next goes to Joe Biden, who has said he will sign the legislation “promptly and proudly”.“Today, Congress took a critical step to ensure that Americans have the right to marry the person they love,” Biden said. “The House’s bipartisan passage of the Respect for Marriage Act – by a significant margin – will give peace of mind to millions of LGBTQI+ and interracial couples who are now guaranteed the rights and protections to which they and their children are entitled.”The historic legislation, known as the Respect for Marriage Act, requires federal and state governments to recognize same-sex and interracial marriages, prohibiting them from denying the validity of a marriage legally performed in another state on the basis of sex, race or ethnicity.During an emotional bill enrollment ceremony on Thursday, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, wiped tears from her eyes as she thanked the many lawmakers and advocates who made the legislation a reality.“At last we have history in the making,” Pelosi said. “Not only are we on the right side of history, we’re on the right side of the future: expanding freedom in America.”Momentum for the bill began to build after the supreme court’s ruling overturning Roe v Wade in June raised fears that the conservative-leaning court might reverse same-sex marriage next. Writing in support of the majority’s decision, the conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas had suggested the court might also consider striking down “demonstrably erroneous” precedents set by rulings like Obergefell v Hodges, the 2015 decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide and ended bans in the states that had them.Tammy Baldwin, the first openly gay person elected to the Senate, said the newly passed bill would provide reassurance to all LGBTQ+ citizens living in fear of having their marriages invalidated.“Today we are making history, but we’re also making a difference for millions of Americans,” said Baldwin, who played a key role in crafting the bill. “With the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act, we can put to rest the worries of millions of loving couples who are concerned that some day an activist supreme court may take their rights and freedoms away.”Despite support from some Republican lawmakers, most still opposed the legislation, calling it unnecessary. During the House debate over the bill, a number of Republicans criticized the proposal as an insult to religious liberty and a Democratic attempt to force liberal policies on more conservative states.However, should Obergefell fall, the new law would not compel all 50 states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples nor does it stop states from moving to ban or limit same-sex marriages. In a concession to win Republican support, the measure also includes an exemption for religious organizations, guaranteeing that they would not be required to provide goods, services or accommodations for a celebration of a same-sex marriage, and that such a refusal would not jeopardize their tax-exempt status or other benefits.Notably, the bill would also repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (Doma), which defined a marriage as the union between a man and a woman and denied federal benefits to same-sex couples. Though the supreme court struck down part of the law, it remained on the books.When Bill Clinton signed Doma into law in 1996, same-sex marriage was considered a divisive cultural issue. At the time, nearly seven in 10 Americans said marriages between same-sex couples should not be recognized by law as valid, according to Gallup. Now, decades later, almost exactly the same number of Americans – a record 71% – say same-sex unions should be legal.The former Democratic congressman Barney Frank, the first House member to voluntarily come out as gay, celebrated Doma’s demise at the bill enrollment ceremony on Thursday, where his arrival was greeted with applause.“I was here for the birth of Doma, so I am very grateful to be able to be here for the funeral,” Frank said.LGBTQ advocates, meanwhile, praised the legislation as a “clear victory for this country’s 568,000 same-sex married couples”. But they argued that there is still more to do to protect marriage equality and LGBTQ+ Americans, who continue to face threats and violence, including a deadly shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs last month.“Today’s vote in the House of Representatives sends a clear message: love is winning,” said Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign. “We eagerly await the president’s signature on this important legislation – and look forward to continuing to fight for full equality for everyone in our community, without exception.”While there was little question the bill would pass the Democratic-controlled House, proponents say its passage was not inevitable.Earlier this summer, House Democrats held what many expected would amount to a “show” vote demonstrating their commitment to protecting same-sex marriage while drawing a contrast with Republicans, whose midterm message targeted LGBTQ+ Americans.But 47 House Republican lawmakers unexpectedly voted for the measure, a bipartisan tally that suddenly gave advocates hope that the upper chamber could muster enough bipartisan support to overcome the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold. After months of negotiating, the Senate voted 61-36 to approve a version of the measure, sponsored by Baldwin. It drew the support of 12 Republican senators.“On the Senate side, I think we can say we defied political gravity,” Baldwin said on Thursday.The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, heralded the legislation as a “very important step forward” in the nation’s “long but inexorable march towards greater equality”. Like many Americans, the issue of marriage equality is personal for Schumer. His daughter and her wife are expecting their first child next year.“Today, thanks to the tireless advocacy of many, many in this room and the dogged work by many of my colleagues, my grandchild will live in a world that will respect and honor their mothers’ marriage,” Schumer said at the enrollment ceremony.For Pelosi, who announced last month that she would step down from House leadership, the bill’s passage was not just a national achievement but also a personal milestone. When Pelosi joined the House in 1987, her first remarks on the floor were about fighting HIV/Aids. Now, after 35 years in office and two stints as speaker, one of the final bills she will send to the president will protect the rights of LGBTQ+ couples.Just before voting for the bill, Pelosi said: “Today, we stand up for the values the vast majority of Americans hold dear – a belief in the dignity, beauty and divinity – divinity, a spark of divinity in every person – an abiding respect for love so powerful that it binds two people together.”TopicsHouse of RepresentativesLGBTQ+ rightsUS politicsUS CongressDemocratsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

AnalysisGriner release is cause for relief but Viktor Bout transfer tough to stomachDavid Smith in WashingtonCritics label Biden’s decision to release Russian arms dealer ‘deeply disturbing’ – even if Brittney Griner’s freedom is excellent news Last month, the Russian parliament mounted an unusual art exhibition with subjects ranging from the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to a sentimental image of a kitten. They had been produced in prison by Viktor Bout, serving 25 years in America.Brittney Griner freed from Russian prison in exchange for Viktor BoutRead moreHistory has shown that a sideline as an amateur artist is not much guarantee of moral integrity. Bout, known as “the merchant of death”, was the world’s most notorious arms dealer, selling weapons to rogue states, rebel groups and murderous warlords in Africa, Asia and South America.That, for many, was what made his release on Thursday in a prisoner swap for US basketball star Brittney Griner difficult to stomach. Joe Biden has done a deal with the devil. But he may also have saved a woman’s life. As the president found in Afghanistan, the big decisions are seldom morally clearcut.On the credit side, Griner’s release is spectacularly good news. She was arrested in February after vape canisters containing cannabis oil were found in her luggage. Against the backdrop of war in Ukraine, her nine-year prison sentence was wildly disproportionate. Her transfer to a penal colony, with its promise of sexism, racism and homophobia in medieval conditions, raised fears for her survival.But on the debit side, despite Vladimir Putin’s effort to portray Bout as painter and classical music lover with a sensitive soul, the arms dealer has blood on his hands. He armed militias in Sierra Leone, the Liberian war criminal Charles Taylor and the Taliban in Afghanistan. His life helped inspire the 2005 Hollywood film Lord of War, starring Nicholas Cage.Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, captured the ambivalence in a statement on Thursday. The Democrat welcomed Griner’s release as a “moment of profound relief” but warned that “releasing Bout back into the world is a deeply disturbing decision”.He added: “We must stop inviting dictatorial and rogue regimes to use Americans overseas as bargaining chips, and we must try do better at encouraging American citizens against traveling to places like Russia where they are primary targets for this type of unlawful detention.”Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee, also expressed relief but warned that “trading Viktor Bout – a dangerous convicted arms dealer who was in prison for conspiring to kill Americans – will only embolden Vladimir Putin to continue his evil practice of taking innocent Americans hostage for use as political pawns”.Predictably, there was a less measured response from Donald Trump’s wing of the Republican party. Some cried foul over the fact that while Griner was coming home, the former US marine Paul Whelan, convicted in 2020 of spying, will remain in a penal colony.Cory Mills, an Afghanistan and Iraq war veteran and congressman-elect from Florida, tweeted: “Biden clearly showed his priority is celebrities over veterans. I guess Brittany’s basketball career in WNBA was more important than Paul Whelan’s service to our nation as a marine.”Family of US man held in Russia lament ‘catastrophe for Paul’ after Griner swapRead moreIn a phone interview from his penal colony, Whelan told CNN he was glad Griner had been released but “greatly disappointed” that the Biden administration has not done more to secure his own freedom. According to the White House, Russia is treating Whelan’s case differently because of his espionage conviction and was not willing to include him in the deal.Not even Republicans, however, were accusing Biden of being “soft on Russia”, given his success in rallying the west against Putin in Ukraine – a vivid contrast from Trump’s embrace of the autocrat. The war has been unusual in its lack of ambiguity between right and wrong.After meeting Griner’s wife, Cherelle, in the Oval Office, it was clear Biden had no doubt he had done the right thing despite the understandable ethical qualms.“It’s my job as president of the United States to make the hard calls,” he said. “And I’m proud that, today, we have made one more family whole again.”TopicsJoe BidenUS foreign policyUS politicsRussiaViktor BoutBrittney GrineranalysisReuse this content More

Arkansas city elects 18-year-old as youngest Black mayor in USJaylen Smith, who lives at home with his parents, will be next leader of Earle, population 1,785 It is not even a year since Jaylen Smith was learning the power of the youth vote as a student government leader at his high school in Arkansas. Now the pioneering teenager is about to put his knowledge into practice as the youngest elected Black mayor anywhere in the US.On Tuesday, as the Georgia Senate runoff was capturing the attention of the nation, Smith, 18, was steadily amassing the votes he needed to become the next leader of the small city of Earle, population 1,785.“You have to start somewhere, you really do,” Smith, who graduated from Earle high school last summer after three years as Student Government Association president, told the Washington Post.“I didn’t want to be 30 or 40 and become a mayor when I could be one right now.”Smith, who lives at home with his parents, said his mother could not stop crying about his success, which came with a 235-183 vote defeat of Nemi Matthews, the city’s street and sanitation superintendent.Matthews was one of the first to offer his best wishes, writing: “I congratulate mayor-elect Jaylen Smith for a well ran race, I wish you well.”Smith credited younger voters, having proved his credentials to them by negotiating a deal with a high school cafeteria vendor, among other issues.“I worked time after time to get them what they wanted,” he said, adding that his achievements in school matters had made him “passionate and determined” to serve the wider community.While not the first 18-year-old to become an elected mayor – an honor that fell to Michael Sessions in Hillsdale, Michigan, in 2005 – Smith is the youngest Black candidate to achieve the feat.“I’m excited for Jaylen and the entire community in Earle as he becomes the youngest-ever African American mayor elected in the country,” Frank Scott Jr, mayor of Little Rock, Arkansas, and president of the African American Mayors’ Association, told CNN.“I’m proud of his willingness to enter into public service at such a young age and his aspirational goals for the city.”Smith said he consulted several mayors across the state before his campaign, and thanked them for their guidance. In his own message posted to Facebook, he said it was “time to build a better chapter” for his city.Among his first orders of business after he is sworn in next month, Smith said, would be to move the city’s police department to 24-hour operation. Other policy goals include ridding Earle of abandoned homes, creating jobs for city youth and providing transportation for elderly or infirm residents to grocery stores.Smith was set to return to Earle high school on Thursday, for a celebration of what supporters billed as “a monumental moment for our town”.TopicsArkansasUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is subject of House ethics investigationSpokesperson for New York Democrat ‘confident’ undisclosed matter ‘will be dismissed’ The New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is under investigation by the House of Representatives’ ethics committee, the leaders of the panel said.Republicans reflect and blame after Trump-backed candidate Walker losesRead moreThe Democratic acting chair, Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, and acting ranking member, Michael Guest, a Mississippi Republican, released a statement on Wednesday.They said: “The matter regarding Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez … was transmitted to the committee by the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) on 23 June.”The subject of the investigation was not revealed.The committee said: “The mere fact of a referral or an extension, and the mandatory disclosure of such an extension and the name of the subject of the matter, does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred, or reflect any judgment on behalf of the committee.”A spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez said: “The congresswoman has always taken ethics incredibly seriously, refusing any donations from lobbyists, corporations, or other special interests. We are confident that this matter will be dismissed.”The House ethics committee said it would announce its “course of action” after the new Congress convenes in January.Ocasio-Cortez won her seat in Congress in 2018, after a shock primary victory over Joe Crowley, a senior House Democrat. She has since emerged as a leading figure among progressives, widely known as AOC and the target of rightwing invective and harassment.In September 2021, the American Accountability Foundation filed an ethics complaint against Ocasio-Cortez “for accepting an impermissible gift” to attend the Met Gala.Ocasio-Cortez made a splash at the $35,000-a-ticket New York society event, wearing a dress emblazoned with the slogan “Tax the Rich”. A spokesperson said: “She was invited as a guest of the Met. She also did not get to keep the dress.”In 2019, in a slightly bizarre twist, it was reported that Donald Trump had become “enamored” and “starstruck” by a politician half his age and his ideological opposite, and had compared her to a historical figure made famous in America at least by a Broadway musical.Trump calls Ocasio-Cortez ‘Evita’ in new book American CarnageRead more“I called her Eva Perón,” Trump said, according to the book American Carnage by Tim Alberta. “I said, ‘That’s Eva Perón. That’s Evita.”Perón, an actor married to the Argentinian president Juan Perón, championed working-class and female voters but died of cancer in 1952, aged 33.Outside Argentina she is largely known through Evita, a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice which premiered in London in 1978 and on Broadway in 1979 and which Trump has said is his favourite show, having seen it six times.Ocasio-Cortez responded: “I know that, like every woman of the people, I have more strength than I appear to have.”TopicsAlexandria Ocasio-CortezUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressDemocratsNew YorknewsReuse this content More