US Politics

The January 6 committee is “in discussions” with lawyers for Donald Trump about whether the former president will comply with the lawmakers’ subpoena for his testimony about the attack on the Capitol, CNN reports vice-chair Liz Cheney said today.At what was expected to be its last public hearing, the January 6 committee last month voted to issue a subpoena to Trump for documents related to the attack and for him to testify under oath. He has not yet said whether he would comply with their summons, but in the past has cheered instances where his allies have defied the committee, and fought aggressively against other investigations into his conduct.According to CNN, Cheney said Trump “has an obligation to comply” with the panel. She said the format of his testimony has not yet been decided but, “It’ll be done under oath. It’ll be done, potentially, over multiple days,” and the committee is not at the “mercy of Donald Trump.” She was speaking in Cleveland, Ohio at an event about the threat of political violence.Trump faces a Friday deadline to turn over documents requested in the subpoena, and a 14 November deadline for his testimony.The supreme court issued two consequential orders in cases concerning Donald Trump today, first by temporarily blocking a House committee from receiving his tax returns until it could consider an emergency petition from the ex-president. However, it turned down an attempt by Republican senator Lindsey Graham to quash a subpoena from a special grand jury in Georgia – meaning the Trump loyalist will soon have to answer questions about efforts to meddle in the state’s 2020 election results. Vice-chair of the January 6 committee Liz Cheney meanwhile revealed the committee was still negotiating with the ex-president’s lawyers over whether he would testify as part of their inquiry into the attack on the Capitol.Here’s what else happened today:
A historian warned the attack against Paul Pelosi last week could be the latest sign of an increase in political violence in the United States. Another likened it to the 1850s, a period when tensions that led to the civil war hit a boiling point.
Trump promoted conspiracy theories about the attack on Pelosi in a podcast interview today.
California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom blamed Fox News for creating the atmosphere that fueled the violence against Pelosi.
Meanwhile in Arizona, the GOP nominee for governor has decided to turn the attack on Paul Pelosi into a punchline, Martin Pengelly reports:The Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, Kari Lake, drew laughter at a campaign event in Scottsdale on Monday with a remark about the attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of the Democratic US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.“Nancy Pelosi, well, she’s got protection when she’s in DC,” Lake said. “Apparently her house doesn’t have a lot of protection.”Paul Pelosi, 82, was attacked with a hammer at his home in San Francisco on Friday. He remained in intensive care on Monday but was expected to recover.His attacker, David DePape, 42, reportedly shouted “Where is Nancy?” On Monday, he was charged with attempted murder, assault and other crimes. Authorities said he told police he wanted to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage and “break her kneecaps”. DePape is also reported to have posted conspiracy-laced screeds online.Republican and rightwing responses to the attack – many seeking to advance the GOP’s law-and-order midterm elections message – have drawn controversy. Democrats and media observers have warned of the danger of stoking politically inspired violence.Republican candidate draws laughter with mockery of attack on Paul PelosiRead moreDavid DePape, who is accused of breaking into Nancy Pelosi’s home and assaulting her husband, Paul, is expected to make his first court appearance today, KTVU reports:JUST IN: Just confirmed David Depape is now being held in County Jail and is no longer in the hospital, as of yesterday. @SheriffSF confirms he was booked in absentia while under Sheriff’s Office protection in the hospital. He’s expected in court at 1:30p @KTVU— James Torrez (@JamesTorrezNews) November 1, 2022
Federal prosecutors yesterday announced charges of attempted kidnapping and assault against DePape over the Friday attack. San Francisco police said after his arrest DePape was held on suspicion of attempted murder and elder abuse, among other charges.Liz Cheney has endorsed another Democrat facing a tight race in next Tuesday’s midterm elections: Ohio Senate candidate Tim Ryan.During an appearance in the state today, Cheney, a Republican congresswoman who is in her last weeks in office after losing her primary earlier this year, said she would not vote for JD Vance, the GOP’s nominee for Ohio’s soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat.Appearing in Ohio, outgoing Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) endorses a second Democratic candidate, Rep. Tim Ryan, who is locked in a tight Senate race with GOP nominee J.D. Vance.Judy Woodruff: “So if you were a Buckeye State voter, you’d be voting for Tim Ryan?”Cheney: “I would.” pic.twitter.com/BPoRlTqcdh— The Recount (@therecount) November 1, 2022
Last month, she endorsed Democratic congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, who is up for re-election in Michigan. The daughter of former Republican vice-president Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney was among the most conservative members of the House, but fell out with the GOP over her opposition to Donald Trump.Republican and Trump critic Liz Cheney to campaign for Michigan DemocratRead moreThe supreme court has turned down a challenge from Republican senator Lindsey Graham to a subpoena from a special grand jury in Georgia that is investigating attempts by Donald Trump’s allies to meddle in the state’s 2020 election results.The court’s order clears the way for Graham to appear before the jurors empaneled by Fulton county district attorney Fanni Willis, which issued the subpoena to the South Carolina lawmaker earlier this year. Graham challenged the summons in federal court, but was unsuccessful.Willis has summoned a number of allies of the former president to a courthouse in Atlanta to answer questions about attempts to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the state. These include Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who has also been told he was a target in the investigation. Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has said Graham suggested throwing out legally cast ballots in the state.Georgia’s secretary of state says Lindsey Graham suggested he throw out legal ballotsRead moreThe January 6 committee is “in discussions” with lawyers for Donald Trump about whether the former president will comply with the lawmakers’ subpoena for his testimony about the attack on the Capitol, CNN reports vice-chair Liz Cheney said today.At what was expected to be its last public hearing, the January 6 committee last month voted to issue a subpoena to Trump for documents related to the attack and for him to testify under oath. He has not yet said whether he would comply with their summons, but in the past has cheered instances where his allies have defied the committee, and fought aggressively against other investigations into his conduct.According to CNN, Cheney said Trump “has an obligation to comply” with the panel. She said the format of his testimony has not yet been decided but, “It’ll be done under oath. It’ll be done, potentially, over multiple days,” and the committee is not at the “mercy of Donald Trump.” She was speaking in Cleveland, Ohio at an event about the threat of political violence.Trump faces a Friday deadline to turn over documents requested in the subpoena, and a 14 November deadline for his testimony.Federal prosecutors have asked for a three-month prison sentence for a US army veteran from Tennessee who pleaded guilty to invading the US Capitol on the day of the January 6 attack.According to documents filed by the US justice department, James Brooks admitted he spent more than two hours in the Capitol during the insurrection while equipped with tear gas, body armor and a two-way radio. He also acknowledged yelling at officers trying to defend the building: “You took an oath like I did… every one of you!”Brooks’s sentencing is tentatively set for Thursday.He is among more than 900 Capitol rioters who have been charged in connection with an attack to which officials have linked nine deaths, including suicides among law enforcement officers left traumatized by that day. Supporters of Donald Trump staged the attack as an unsuccessful attempt to keep the former president in the Oval Office after his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.Democrats are banking that outrage over the supreme court’s upending of abortion rights will help their candidates in the midterms. The Guardian’s Poppy Noor reports from one district in Michigan, where the dynamic appears to be real for an embattled Democrat:Elissa Slotkin is a straight shooter. She doesn’t miss a beat when asked a tough question. She speaks up often, and forcefully, against things she perceives as unjust – whether perpetrated by her opponents or her own Democratic party. But when asked what she’ll think if the proposal to enshrine abortion rights in Michigan’s state constitution doesn’t pass this November, she clams up.Slotkin fidgets, stroking one thumb over the other, in a repetitive, soothing motion.Is she discombobulated?“Yes,” she answers, back to her usual, rapid-fire pace.Why?“I’ll tell you this,” Slotkin begins. “If it fails to pass, I won’t be re-elected. Because it means I’m fundamentally out of touch.”She pauses, cautiously, and adds: “But I don’t believe that to be the case. I think I’m going to win.”That’s a big statement. Slotkin is running in one of the country’s most tightly contested seats, as a Democrat who won Trump voters back from the Republican party in both 2018 and 2020.She is also running in a midterm election full of twists and turns – one that has seen Democrats’ hopes to avoid the typically poor showing of the party in power begin to rise, only to plummet again. But even with a mixed economy, rising inflation and unfavourable polling for the president, people are putting their money on Slotkin in huge numbers: the race for Michigan’s seventh, a newly drawn district pitting Slotkin against state senator Tom Barrett, has become the most expensive race in the country in terms of outside spending. Outside spending, generally, is a good barometer for how important a race is, with the largest amounts coming from the national parties – and in the case of the seventh, $27m has been poured into the race.Michigan Democrat’s lead shows abortion may be the issue that decides midterm racesRead moreConcerns about political violence across the US as the 8 November midterm elections loom won’t subside after a candidate for a seat in the Pennsylvania state house of representatives was reportedly attacked at his home Monday.Richard Ringer, a 69-year-old Democrat, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that an attacker blooded him and knocked him unconscious in his backyard about 5am.“A guy was standing with his back to me – I went and bear-hugged him, wrestled, ended up on the ground,” Ringer said of the violent encounter. “He was larger than I am and he pinned me down on my left side.”Ringer also said: “He hit me 10 to 12 times in the head, in the face and by the eye and he knocked me out” and fled.The description of the attack to the Post-Gazette doesn’t suggest an overtly political motive. But the newspaper noted that the confrontation marked the third time in two weeks he has had to call 911 as his run for an open state House seat against a Republican, Charity Grimm Krupa, comes to a close.Meanwhile, though police investigators haven’t publicly identified any potential suspects, Ringer said he couldn’t help but wonder if the attack on him at this stage of his campaign pertained to his candidacy.Ringer’s attack Monday happened hours before federal authorities charged the man accused of breaking into the home of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and battering her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer last week was charged with attempted kidnapping and assault.Authorities allege that the intruder, 42-year-old David DePape, wanted to break Nancy Pelosi’s kneecaps so that she would have to be brought into Congress in a wheelchair as a warning to lawmakers that actions have consequences.It was the second time in less than two years that the House Speaker was targeted by a violent attack. Her office was vandalized on the day that far-right extremists supporting former president Donald Trump staged the US Capitol attack on January 6 2021.DePape’s arrest prompted Pelosi’s fellow Democrats to ramp up their warnings of escalating political violence in America.Joe Biden is on his way to Florida today to campaign for the Democratic candidates for governor and senator, both of whom are seen as trailing their Republican opponents. Part of the reason for that is discontent with Democrats’ handling of the economy, and in a speech Monday afternoon, the president tried to regain the initiative from Republicans, according to the Associated Press:Joe Biden has accused oil companies of “war profiteering” as the president raised the possibility of imposing a windfall tax if companies don’t boost domestic production.In remarks on Monday, just over a week away from the 8 November midterm elections, Biden criticized major oil companies for making record profits while refusing to help lower prices at the pump for American people. The president said he would look to Congress to levy tax penalties on oil companies if they don’t begin to invest some of their profits in lowering costs for American consumers.“My team will work with Congress to look at these options that are available to us and others,” Biden said. “It’s time for these companies to stop war profiteering, meet their responsibilities in this country and give the American people a break and still do very well.”Biden accuses oil companies of ‘war profiteering’ and threatens windfall taxRead moreThe release of Donald Trump’s tax returns to a House committee has been delayed by the supreme court’s chief justice John Roberts, who ordered the Democratic-led panel to respond in a lawsuit from the former president by Thursday of next week. The temporary stay is a reprieve for Trump, who has refused to make his filings public since his first campaign for office in 2016.Here’s what else happened today so far:
A historian warned the attack against Paul Pelosi last week could be the latest sign of an increase in political violence in the United States. Another likened it to the 1850s, a period when tensions that led to the civil war hit a boiling point.
Trump promoted conspiracy theories about the attack on Pelosi in a podcast interview today.
California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom blamed Fox News for creating the atmosphere that fueled the violence against Pelosi.
This post has been corrected to say the House committee’s deadline to respond to the supreme court’s stay is Thursday of next week, not this week.The list of Republican candidates beyond the reach of conspiracy theories grows shorter. Martin Pengelly reports that a New Hampshire school rebuked the state’s GOP Senate candidate Don Bolduc for making bizarre claims about what happens on its premises:A New Hampshire school has rebuked the Republican US Senate candidate Don Bolduc for claiming schoolchildren were identifying as “furries and fuzzies” in classrooms, using litter trays and licking themselves and each other.“I wish I was making it up,” Bolduc, a retired special forces general, said last week.In response, Pinkerton Academy, in Derry, said Bolduc was indeed making it up.On social media on Monday, the school said: “It has come to our attention that at a recent event in Claremont Don Bolduc named Pinkerton in false claims suggesting that unhygienic, disturbing practices are taking place in our classrooms and spaces on campus.“We want to assure our community that Mr Bolduc’s statements are entirely untrue. We invite all political candidates to speak with members of our administration or visit our campus so they can inform themselves about our school before making claims about what occurs here.”US school criticizes Republican Senate candidate for repeating false litter box claimRead moreCalifornia governor Gavin Newsom blamed Fox News for the attack on Paul Pelosi, saying the husband of Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi had become a fixation for one of the network’s commentators in the run-up to the attack:“I don’t think anyone’s been dehumanized like she has consistently,” Newsom, a Democrat, said of Nancy Pelosi in an interview with CBS. “Now I watched this one guy, Jesse Watters or something on Fox News. What he’s been saying about Paul Pelosi the last five, six months, mocking him consistently. Don’t tell me that’s not aiding and abetting all this. Of course it is.”“They’re sowing the seeds, creating a culture and a climate like this,” the governor continued. “I mean, look online. Look at the sewage that is online that they amplify on these networks and in social media to dehumanize people like Nancy Pelosi and other political leaders.”On Monday afternoon, Watters attempted to blame Newsom’s policies for allowing the accused attacker David DePape to be free – though it’s unclear if DePape had any criminal history prior to the attack. “If anything, Gavin Newsom has done more to aid and abet this attack on Paul Pelosi than anybody,” Watters said on Fox News.Prior to the attack, Paul Pelosi had been in the news for pleading guilty to driving under the influence:Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s husband, pleads guilty to drunk driving chargeRead more More

US supreme court blocks handover of Trump’s tax returns to CongressRight-dominated court will weigh the former president’s appeal against release sought by Democratic-controlled House The US supreme court’s chief justice, John Roberts, on Tuesday put a temporary hold on the handover of Donald Trump’s tax returns to a congressional committee.Roberts’s order gives the supreme court time to weigh the legal issues in the former president’s emergency appeal to the high court, filed on Monday.Without court intervention, the US treasury department could have provided the tax returns to the Democratic-controlled House ways and means committee as early as Thursday.Prosecutors accuse Trump Organization of ‘greed and cheating’ in tax fraud trialRead moreRoberts gave the committee until 10 November to respond. The chief justice handles emergency appeals from Washington DC, where the fight over Trump’s taxes has been going on since 2019.Lower courts ruled that the committee has broad authority to obtain tax returns and rejected Trump’s claims that it was overstepping.If Trump can persuade the nation’s highest court to intervene in this case, he could delay a final decision until the start of the next Congress in January. If Republicans recapture control of the House after the 8 November midterms, they could drop the records request.The temporary delay imposed by Roberts is the third such order issued by justices in recent days in cases related to Trump.The court separately is weighing US senator Lindsey Graham’s emergency appeal to avoid having to testify before a Georgia grand jury that is investigating potential illegal interference by Trump and his allies in the 2020 election in the state.Also before the court is an emergency appeal from Arizona Republican party chairperson Kelli Ward to prevent the handover of phone records to the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.The House Ways and Means panel and its Democratic chairperson, Richard Neal of Massachusetts, first requested Trump’s tax returns in 2019 as part of an investigation into the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audit program and tax law compliance by the former president. A federal law says the IRS “shall furnish” the returns of any taxpayer to a handful of top lawmakers.The US justice department, under the Trump administration, had defended a decision by the treasury secretary at the time, Steven Mnuchin, to withhold the tax returns from Congress. Mnuchin argued that he could withhold the documents because he concluded they were being sought by Democrats for partisan reasons. A lawsuit ensued.After Joe Biden took the Oval Office, the committee renewed the request, seeking Trump’s tax returns and additional information from 2015-2020. The White House took the position that the request was a valid one and that the treasury department had no choice but to comply. Trump then attempted to halt the handover in court.The Manhattan district attorney at the time, Cyrus Vance Jr, obtained copies of Trump’s personal and business tax records as part of a criminal investigation. That case, too, went to the supreme court, which rejected Trump’s argument that he had broad immunity as president.Trump had most recently sought the justices’ intervention in a legal dispute stemming from the search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in August. The court rejected that appeal.TopicsUS supreme courtDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Ketanji Brown Jackson grills lawyer in case seeking to end affirmative actionNewest member of US supreme court seems to reject idea that affirmative action in university admissions is unconstitutional The newest US supreme court justice and the bench’s first Black woman, Ketanji Brown Jackson, made a clarion call in favor of keeping race as one of many factors in US higher education admissions, as America’s highest court heard oral arguments on the issue of affirmative action.The court is hearing two back-to-back cases brought against the University of North Carolina (UNC) and Harvard University by a conservative activist group, Students for Fair Admissions, but has not ruled.The group aims to block colleges from diversifying their student bodies by taking race into consideration alongside academic achievement and multiple other elements, essentially claiming that such a policy gives an unfair leg-up to African American and Hispanic students, who are underrepresented on campus, and discriminates against white and Asian American students.US students on why affirmative action is crucial: ‘They need our voices’Read moreA supporter of affirmative action, Cecilia Polanco, previously told the Guardian that: “A lot of the assumption is that someone less qualified than me took my place. That’s not what affirmative action does. It offers support to students who are just as qualified and may have different life experiences.”With a 6-3 conservative super-majority now on the court, affirmative action is deemed to be in jeopardy.Jackson has somewhat controversially recused herself from the case being heard second, against Harvard, because she attended it, though other current supreme court justices also attended Harvard but have not recused themselves.But Jackson spoke out stridently on Monday in the first case, involving UNC at Chapel Hill, when arguments were heard at the supreme court in Washington, where protesters on both sides gathered outside.Against Patrick Strawbridge, a lawyer for the plaintiff, Jackson said: “You haven’t demonstrated or shown one situation in which all they [the universities] look at is race. They’re looking at the full person.”Strawbridge said affirmative action violates the US constitution’s equal protection guarantees and federal non-discrimination statutes.Jackson said: “What I’m worried about is that the rule that you’re advocating, that in the context of a holistic review process, the university can take into account and value all of the other background and personal characteristics of other applicants, but they can’t value race … that seems to me to have the potential of causing more of an equal protection problem than it’s actually solving.”The justice was nominated in February by Joe Biden upon Stephen Breyer’s retirement. She was confirmed by the US Senate in April and had already been making an impact in the court’s new term.‘It means the world to us’: Black lawmakers’ euphoria greets Jackson confirmationRead moreOn Monday she explained her reasoning to Strawbridge by giving a hypothetical example of two aspiring students applying to UNC.She said: “The first applicant says, ‘I’m from North Carolina, my family has been in this area for generations since before the civil war, and I would like you to know that I will be the fifth generation to graduate from University of North Carolina. I now have that opportunity to do that. And in my family background, it’s important to me that I get to attend this university – I want to honor my family’s legacy by going to this school.’She continued: “The second applicant says ‘I’m from North Carolina. My family has been in this area for generations since before the civil war, but they were slaves and never had a chance to attend this venerable institution. As an African American, I now have that opportunity and given my family background it’s important to me to attend this university. I want to honor my family legacy by going to this school.’“Now, as I understand your no-race-conscious admissions rule, these two applicants would have a dramatically different opportunity to tell their family stories and to have them count.”Jackson added: “The first applicant would be able to have his family background considered and valued by the institution as part of its consideration of whether or not to admit him, while the second one wouldn’t be able to because his story is in many ways bound up with his race and with the race of his ancestors.“So I want to know, based on how your rule would likely play out in scenarios like that, why excluding consideration of race in a situation in which the person is not saying that his race is something that has impacted him in a negative way – he just wants to have it honored, just like the other person has their personal background family story honored – why is telling him no not an equal protection violation?”Strawbridge said the university could take into account factors such as whether a student would be the first generation in their family to attend and whether they may be economically disadvantaged, but he said that race should not be relevant these days.TopicsUS supreme courtUS politicsUS universitiesnewsReuse this content More

The attack on Paul Pelosi should be a moment of national reckoning Jill FilipovicAll political violence is a problem, but in terms of sheer numbers, rightwing extremism is a much more significant problem than leftwing radicalism Much of American life has gotten coarser, uglier and crueler in the years since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016. Even with Trump out of office, his legacy persists, and it erodes American life every day.On Friday, in a grisly act of political violence, a man broke into the home of the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, one of the US right’s most vilified political figures, and attacked her husband with a hammer, fracturing his skull and leaving him with serious injuries. The attacker, 42-year-old David DePape, was reportedly carrying zip ties and duct tape and yelling: “Where’s Nancy?”Paul Pelosi is lucky he wasn’t killed – a hammer to the skull can certainly do the job, especially when the victim is an elderly man. And while I imagine that Nancy Pelosi is feeling enormous grief and guilt over the fact that her husband was nearly murdered in an attack that seemed aimed at her, she’s also lucky she wasn’t home at the time of the assault.Such an extreme act should shock the conscience of the nation. Instead, it has shown just how immune to human decency and empathy the Trumpist right has become. Trump’s son Donald Jr tweeted an image of a pair of men’s underwear and a hammer with the caption “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready”.His father has thus far remained silent, as have many Republican elected officials. Conservatives in the media, meanwhile, are working overtime to deny that the right holds any responsibility here, chalking this up to a random act of violence and arguing that sometimes leftists are violent, too.That’s not totally wrong: a mentally disturbed man was arrested outside supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house with a gun this past summer, and another shot at a bunch of Republican congressmen at baseball practice in 2017, nearly killing Representative Steve Scalise.But there are a few major differences, not least among them the fact that rightwing political violence is much more common than leftwing political violence, and that rightwing violence is much more likely to be fatal than leftwing violence. In the US, rightwing extremists aren’t just more dangerous than leftwing ones, but are more dangerous than Islamic radicals and those inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaida. Since 1994, a majority of terrorist plots within the US were hatched by rightwing radicals.All political violence is a problem. But in terms of sheer numbers, rightwing violence is a much more significant problem than leftwing violence.That may be, in part, because of the right wing’s broad permission structure when it comes to unchecked misogyny, threatening and menacing political opponents, and refusing to forcefully condemn violent acts. When Scalise was shot and Kavanaugh was threatened, prominent Democrats didn’t sit in silence. Bernie Sanders, who was reportedly the favored candidate of the man who shot Scalise, immediately came out after the shooting to say, “I am sickened by this despicable act,” and emphasized that “real change can only come about through nonviolent action.” When the man menacing Kavanaugh was arrested, Joe Biden condemned the man’s actions in no uncertain terms, and supported expanded security measures for supreme court justices.And prominent liberals with national platforms and connections to Democratic administrations didn’t suggest dressing up as a bloody Steve Scalise or a dead Brett Kavanaugh on Halloween. The only prominent liberal to make such a tasteless joke – which had nothing to do with an actual assassination attempt – was the famously vulgar comedian Kathy Griffin, who posted a gory photo of herself holding the fake severed head of Donald Trump; for that, she lost most of her professional work and was booted from her television gigs, investigated by the Secret Service and, according to her, threatened with a charge of conspiracy to assassinate the president of the United States.By contrast, threatening and menacing Democrats has become a staple not just of conservative big mouths on YouTube and talk radio, but of Republicans seeking office. Trump, notoriously, used his rallies to encourage supporters to chant “lock her up” about Hillary Clinton. Republican representative Paul Gosar tweeted a bizarre cartoon video of him killing the Democrat representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and threatening President Biden; he refused to apologize for it, and his actions were not broadly condemned on the right.The Republican representative from Georgia Marjorie Taylor Greene has said that Pelosi has committed treason, a crime “punishable by death”. The Minnesota Republican representative Tom Emmer tweeted a video of himself shooting a gun, along with the words “Exercising my Second Amendment rights” and the hashtag #FirePelosi. Blake Masters, a Republican who is running for a Senate seat in Arizona, has published campaign ads in which he is holding guns (in one of the ads, he specifies: “It wasn’t designed for hunting – this is designed to kill people”) and has said that when it comes to what he believes is a war between left and right, “You can recite an eloquent poem about pacifism right before they line you up against the wall and shoot you.”Republican Eric Greitens ran for Senate with an ad featuring him armed and breaking down a door, saying: “Get a Rino-hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.” (Rino stands for “Republican in name only”, slang for moderate members of the GOP.)There is also the fact of rightwing violence against women, which seems less and less like a political liability. Republicans do not have a total lock on misogynist violence, but the number of GOP candidates accused of abuse and assault is truly stunning – and so too is the party’s general shrug in response. This seems to be another outcome of the presidency of a man who bragged on video about sexually assaulting women: abusing women and girls is simply not a disqualifier for those on the Republican ticket.And finally, there is the rightwing conspiracy-mongering that predictably draws in those who are untethered to reality, and the related rhetoric that makes fixing the invented problem a kind of life-and-death battle of good versus evil. The anti-abortion movement truly pioneered this strategy, claiming abortion is murder and likening abortion clinics to Hitler’s extermination factories during the Holocaust.The outcome of telling people that millions of babies were being literally murdered in this clinic down the street was a predictable one: clinics attacked, women menaced and harassed, doctors and other workers murdered. And instead of losing, the anti-abortion terrorists won: the Republican party agreed with their political aims and Republican presidents appointed anti-abortion supreme court justices, and abortion is no longer a protected constitutional right.The US right has gotten even more unhinged in recent years, with many Trump supporters embracing the QAnon conspiracy theories, believing Democrats are trafficking children through pizza restaurants and in Wayfair furniture, and even mainstream Republicans are joining in on Trump’s “Stop the Steal” refrain that the 2020 election was stolen (it wasn’t).When you promulgate totally baseless, crazy ideas and convince your followers that the mainstream media are lying to them and that political opponents aren’t just ideologically different but are literally a threat to your life, and then you insist on living in a country where people can be armed to the teeth, it’s tough to act surprised when your followers are crazy and violent.There is a pattern here that you just don’t see on the left: the fetishization of deadly weapons; violence against women that goes unpunished by the party and its supporters; the kind of troubling conspiracy theories that are catnip for crazies and that demand extreme action in response; and the fantasizing about murdering one’s political opponents, all tossed into the cauldron together.It’s not a coincidence, given the hyper-masculine misogyny element to all of this, that much of the violent rightwing fantasizing is directed at women, Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez chief among them. This isn’t the first time Nancy Pelosi was targeted by violent rightwing men. During the January 6 insurrection in 2021, she was a target of the rioters who broke into the Capitol building and wandered the halls calling her name in the kind of singsong voices usually reserved for horror movies: “Nancy, oh Nancy! Where are you, Nancy?”Republicans have largely refused to reckon with what happened on January 6. And even now, they are treating the Pelosi attack like a sideshow instead of the real warning it is. Just hours after Pelosi’s husband took a hammer to the head and as he was undergoing surgery to repair his cracked skull, Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, told an audience of rally-goers: “There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re going to send [Pelosi] back to be with him in California.”The attack on Paul Pelosi should be a moment of reckoning. For the past several years, it has felt like the wheels on this bus are getting progressively looser, and the risks of conflict, both political and interpersonal, rising higher. Depending on how Republicans react to this moment, it could simply be a footnote – a bad and tragic act, but one without lasting national effects – or one of those historical inflection points we look back on as indicative of the dangerous turn the nation was about to make.
Jill Filipovic is the author of OK Boomer, Let’s Talk
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How Michigan’s abortion referendum could decide key congressional race Democratic candidate Elissa Slotkin says abortion is a top issues in the state and fear of a ban will motivate voters to re-elect her: ‘I’ve never seen anything like it’Elissa Slotkin is a straight shooter. She doesn’t miss a beat when asked a tough question. She speaks up often, and forcefully, against things she perceives as unjust – whether perpetrated by her opponents or her own Democratic party. But when asked what she’ll think if the proposal to enshrine abortion rights in Michigan’s state constitution doesn’t pass this November, she clams up.‘This is a blueprint’: abortion rights ballot proposal takes off in MichiganRead moreSlotkin fidgets, stroking one thumb over the other, in a repetitive, soothing motion.Is she discombobulated?“Yes,” she answers, back to her usual, rapid-fire pace.Why?“I’ll tell you this,” Slotkin begins. “If it fails to pass, I won’t be re-elected. Because it means I’m fundamentally out of touch.”She pauses, cautiously, and adds: “But I don’t believe that to be the case. I think I’m going to win.”That’s a big statement. Slotkin is running in one of the country’s most tightly contested seats, as a Democrat who won Trump voters back from the Republican party in both 2018 and 2020.She is also running in a midterm election full of twists and turns – one that has seen Democrats’ hopes to avoid the typically poor showing of the party in power begin to rise, only to plummet again. But even with a mixed economy, rising inflation and unfavourable polling for the president, people are putting their money on Slotkin in huge numbers: the race for Michigan’s seventh, a newly drawn district pitting Slotkin against state senator Tom Barrett, has become the most expensive race in the country in terms of outside spending. Outside spending, generally, is a good barometer for how important a race is, with the largest amounts coming from the national parties – and in the case of the seventh, $27m has been poured into the race.The race had been neck-and-neck the whole time, but in September something strange happened: Slotkin surged by 18 points. She has held at least a six-point lead over Barrett ever since.The key reason? Abortion.“I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Slotkin. “Everywhere I go, Democrats, Independents and Republicans are talking about this issue. They’re talking about how scared they are of a 1931 abortion ban coming back in Michigan. They don’t want it.”Across the country, the Democrats need to hold on to just a handful of congressional seats this year to keep a majority in the House of Representatives. That has made Michigan’s seventh, and other races like it, so important: whereas single issues, other than the economy aren’t usually enough to turn an entire election, this year several key battleground states are fighting over whether to protect or ban abortion – and that might just be the issue that decides the races.As Slotkin puts it, if the Democrats can win districts in Michigan, the so-called swingiest of swing states, “We still have a path to winning the House.”Still, Slotkin faces a tough challenger in Barrett, an army vet who fought in Iraq and may play to voters in a manufacturing district as the safe choice. He hails from Charlotte, a city in the newly drawn seventh, while the redistricting process – which was decided on by an independent panel to reduce political gerrymandering – has placed Slotkin in a separate district to the family farm where she used to live; she has now moved to Lansing, to live in the area where she’s fighting the race.“He’s really familiar to a good number of the people in this district, which is also quite conservative,” says Jenna Bednar, a political scientist at the University of Michigan. “Tom Barrett doesn’t present himself in any sense as a threatening force. And he is likely to enjoy a lot of support from the rural communities in the district.”But he too has a good challenger in Slotkin – a fiercely bipartisan politician who worked as a CIA analyst and served under both the Bush and the Obama administrations.Recent political maneuvers suggest Barrett, who has previously called himself “100% pro-life” starting from conception, knows his positioning on abortion is unpopular: this summer, he changed his campaign website to soften his anti-abortion stance. Barrett has since stated that his stance hasn’t changed – that he remains anti-abortion, including in cases of rape and incest, and claimed his website was changed by his campaign team, probably to reflect “more salient” issues such as inflation, crime, and the border.Slotkin disputes that.“They’re reading polling,” she asserts. “They realize that in this moderate district, an extreme position does not work … and they have bent over backwards to try and mix the position they really believe in with something that will get them elected.”Indeed, in Michigan, abortion is one of the top issues that comes up on the doorstep, perhaps on par – depending where you are in the state – with inflation. Voters are particularly concerned about impacts on doctors and the health of pregnant people. They see women miscarrying in Texas, and being turned away from the hospital until they “‘come back sicker, with a higher fever, bleeding harder’,” according to Slotkin.“So many nurses are super freaked out,” she says. “And of course, the doctors are fearing litigation. It’s too much, even for Republican pro-life women.”Erika Farley, 45, is one of those Republican women. Despite working for the GOP in Michigan for 20 years, this year she says she will vote for Slotkin. “I was really disturbed by the overturning of Roe v Wade, and I know where Senator Barrett stands on that,” she says.In many ways, being from such a competitive district keeps Slotkin in tune with voters, she thinks. She gave a speech on the House floor in September about a bill that Republicans were trying to delay, that would allow veterans access to abortion care if raped. On that issue, she says, “Republicans were so out of touch with the average American. I was coming from a very competitive district, [whereas] all three of [those trying to delay the bill] were from very easy, ruby-red Republican districts. The only debate they’ve ever had on abortion is who’s more pro-life.”Jeff Timmer, a Republican strategist for more than 30 years before turning away from the party because of Donald Trump, agrees with her take on those Republicans. “They don’t even recognize that their position is in such a distinct minority – that every time [Barrett] utters [his pro-life stance], it repels far more voters than it attracts.”Slotkin believes there is a level of anger floating below the surface for women that she hasn’t seen before. She sees it, she says, because people come to elected officials with their pain.“People tell me some of the most intimate things – things I could barely tell my close friends. They just want me to hear it and say that I’m going to do something about it,” she says.One group she says she is seeing come over to the Democrats because of their anger is women without a college degree. Those are the women, she points out, who, if denied abortion care, would have the hardest time taking time off work, who don’t necessarily have the money to travel to another state for abortion care, “who don’t have the privilege of just escaping from their life, to drive five hours or more to Canada or Chicago for an abortion”.But she accepts the Democrats have their own issues being trusted in the midterms. She mentions Michigan families who have had to cut back because of rising costs: she reckons that’s every family she’s spoken to.“There’s real frustration at the party in power. There’s no doubt – that’s the lead foot for my opponent. [He] is almost gleeful about the economy when gas prices start ticking up,” she says.Slotkin doesn’t hold back from criticizing her own party, either – especially on abortion. Asked whether it was misleading for Biden to promise to codify Roe if the Democrats win the election, Slotkin scoffs.“He does not have the authority to do that – it just doesn’t get anywhere in the Senate.” What’s worse, she says, is that none of this would have been needed had the Democrats done a better job at codifying Roe in the first place.“We have to own the fact that we had a real failure at the federal level to protect women’s rights,” she says. “Over the 50 years since Roe has been in place, no one ever backed it up in legislation. Holy moly – that, to me, feels like we missed a major opportunity.”And she was frustrated to see the national party without a plan after Roe fell. “They were totally taken by surprise,” she says.What bothers Slotkin most, and the reason she couldn’t answer my first question about what happens if proposal 3 doesn’t pass, is that for other states, she feels it’s too late. “If you’re in Alabama, I don’t know what you do.”That’s why the fight for Michigan’s seventh seems to her like a harbinger of America’s future.“The United States is going through something. We’ve had these periods of instability in our past, where the average American wondered if the country was going to continue as they knew it – if their kids and grandkids were going to have the same opportunities they had. So to me, this election is a marker of: are we coming out of this period of extremes?”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022MichiganUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesDemocratsfeaturesReuse this content More

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Florida used to be seen as a swing state but in recent years it has lurched further and further to the right. Now there are worries democracy itself is under threat

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Ahead of the US midterm elections, Oliver Laughland travelled around Florida to find out what really mattered to the people getting ready to vote. He told Michael Safi how he travelled to Disney World, and found the “happiest place on Earth” had become a political battleground thanks to a controversial bill curtailing the teaching of sexuality and gender identity in schools. Elsewhere he met Charlie Crist, the politician trying to take on Ron DeSantis – the Florida governor who is seen by many as the successor to Donald Trump. And he heard how the Democrats are hoping the backlash against the scrapping of Roe v Wade, which protected the right to abortion in the US, could help their party. Finally, with so many voters in the US refusing to believe Joe Biden was lawfully elected, he asks what these elections tell us about the fragility of democracy in the country. More

The justice department has announced charges against David DePape, who was arrested on Friday for allegedly breaking in to House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco residence and assaulting her husband, Paul Pelosi.DePape will face a charge of assault on a family member of a US official in retaliation for their work, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, the justice department said. He will also face a charge of attempting to kidnap a US official over their work, for which he could face a maximum of 20 years in prison.Following DePape’s early Friday morning arrest for the attack, which left Paul Pelosi needing surgery for a skull fracture along with other injuries, San Francisco’s police chief announced DePape was being held on suspicion of several charges, including attempted murder. The city’s district attorney is expected to formally level charges against him today, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.Closing summaryHere’s what happened today:
The supreme court began hearing arguments in two cases that its conservative majority could use to end affirmative action. The AP reported that several members of the conservative bloc, who are known foes of the policy, showed no indication of changing their minds about it during ongoing oral arguments.
The justice department announced charges against David DePape, who allegedly broke in Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco residence and assaulted her husband, Paul Pelosi. The charges include assault and attempted kidnapping. More charges are expected form the San Francisco’s district attorney.
Donald Trump reportedly asked the supreme court to stop House lawmakers from getting his tax returns.
Biden will reunite with Barack Obama in Philadelphia on Saturday to campaign for the state’s Democratic nominees for Senate and governor.
Democrats have a slight advantage in three crucial Senate races, and are in a dead heat for a fourth, according to a New York Times poll.
– Chris Stein and Gabrielle CanonIn the midst of midterms fervor, some Republicans have also used the attack as a chance to tout their “tough on crime” agendas.Texas Congressman Lance Gooden tried to blame Democrats for the attack, responding defensively to evidence that DePape may have been spurred to violence by far-right rhetoric. Others include Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican candidate Kari Lake, and former president Donald Trump, who all blamed Democrats for not doing more to crack down on violent crime..@KariLake @ her event today:“Nancy Pelosi, well, she’s got protection when she’s in DC — apparently her house doesn’t have a lot of protection.”The crowd burst into laughter and the moderator was laughing so hard he covered his face with his notes. From @KateSullivanDC— Kyung Lah (@KyungLahCNN) October 31, 2022
From Forbes:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Americans’ concerns about crime have increased over the past year, particularly among Republicans, leading GOP candidates to make the issue a central focus of their midterm campaigns. Nearly 80% of respondents in a recent Gallup poll said they believe crime is rising nationally, while 56% think crime is rising where they live.While there’s an increasing perception of worsening crime, there’s isn’t strong data to support it. Forbes also highlighted how murder rates dropped 2.4% in the largest US cities this year, according to Major Cities Chiefs Association and violent crimes dipped 1% per FBI statistics.But political divisiveness and aggressive rhetoric is fueling new concerns about the increase in attacks against public officials from both parties.Let’s keep pretending that we don’t know the motivation for the attack on Paul Pelosi pic.twitter.com/3ySXnsD3FD— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) October 31, 2022
The New York Times reports that there’s been a tenfold increase in threats of political violence since Trump’s election and representatives are increasingly worried about their safety.“I wouldn’t be surprised if a senator or House member were killed,” Senator Susan Collins told the New York Times. “What started with abusive phone calls is now translating into active threats of violence and real violence.”In the aftermath of the attack, conservatives and divisive online personalities have floated conspiracy theories questioning the attack against Paul Pelosi and have helped fuel new rounds of misinformation. From Rolling Stone:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Because DePape had a history of blogging about far-right ideas and even dabbled in QAnon conspiracy theories, the GOP has scrambled to deny that this was an attempted assassination of a leading Democrat. Some have gone as far as peddling a conspiracy theory of their own. An “opinion” piece in the fake news publication the Santa Monica Observer falsely claimed that DePape was a sex worker hired by Pelosi and the two had gotten into a physical dispute. The piece was amplified by, among others, Elon Musk, who later deleted his tweeted link without explanation or apology.”San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins told reporters Sunday that there is no evidence of a connection between the two men and details released by FBI officials Monday also counter the conspiratorial claims. Musk, the new owner of Twitter, has come under criticism for spreading the misinformation, sparking concerns that he will do little to curb conspiracies amplified on the social media site. Elon Musk’s Paul Pelosi tweet proves he has no business running Twitter | Robert ReichRead more“If Musk’s tweet doesn’t raise bright red warning signs all over the world about his judgment and character, just days after he took over one of the planet’s largest and most influential media machines, I don’t know what will,” Robert Reich, the former US secretary of labor wrote in an editorial for the Guardian. “That Musk would choose this tragedy to demonstrate the disgusting extremes such hateful lies can reach is another indictment of his character and judgment.”During the terrifying ordeal, Paul Pelosi was able to dial 9-1-1 from a bathroom, court documents show, and officials have highlighted how the quick actions of the dispatcher may have saved his life. With the line open after placing the emergency call, the dispatcher could hear the conversation between assailant David DePape and Pelosi. Two minutes later, the police arrived.“I truly believe, based on what I know, that it was lifesaving,” San Francisco District Attorney Brook Jenkins told ABC News. Jenkins is expected to file additional charges on Monday afternoon. Nancy Pelosi is far from the only Washington politician facing threats. Earlier today, Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell detailed just how menacing the atmosphere has become:.@RepSwalwell (D-CA) says his chief of staff spends 10 hours per week dealing with threats to him and his staff:”We have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in security for myself and my staff. It almost rewards people who want to make threats.” pic.twitter.com/kvfA1GENb1— The Recount (@therecount) October 31, 2022
The San Francisco Chronicle has more details about David DePape, who is now facing federal charges over Friday’s attack on Paul Pelosi.“He has been homeless. This person really does suffer from mental illness and that is probably why he was there at 2am,” DePape’s longtime partner Oxane “Gypsy” Taub told the Chronicle in an interview. She said DePape used drugs and struggled with mental illness, to the point that he thought “he was Jesus for a year.”The story paints a picture of DePape’s erratic life and bouts of homelessness that led to him being consumed by conspiracy theories, culminating in his attack on the Democratic House speaker’s husband.Here’s more from the Chronicle:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Taub remembered DePape, 42, as a “shy and sweet” person who once supported her well-documented fight against San Francisco’s public nudity laws. “David never appeared nude in any of my events even though he was encouraged to,” she said. “He was uncomfortable.”
When the pair met in Hawaii in 2000, she said, DePape “didn’t know anything about politics,” but came to share her fervor for many progressive causes — though Taub also espoused conspiracy theories about the September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
“I don’t think he became a Trump supporter,” Taub said Sunday. “He was against the government, but if anything he was opposed to the shadow government, against the people who really run the government and use politicians as puppets. Like Trump was a puppet. David and I were against the shadow government.”
Authorities say DePape, who most recently lived in Richmond, broke into the Pelosi home in San Francisco early Friday morning looking for the House speaker but found her husband alone. It’s not clear whether the intruder drove to the home or traveled there another way.The justice department’s complaint for its charges against David DePape contains harrowing details of the assault on Paul Pelosi.Here is what San Francisco police officers found when they responded to a 911 call at the Pelosi residence:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}At 2:31 a.m., San Francisco Police Department (“SFPD”) Officer Colby Wilmes responded to the Pelosi residence, California and knocked on the front door. When the door was opened, Pelosi and DePape were both holding a hammer with one hand and DePape had his other hand holding onto Pelosi’s forearm. Pelosi greeted the officers. The officers asked them what was going on. DePape responded that everything was good. Officers then asked Pelosi and DePape to drop the hammer. DePape pulled the hammer from Pelosi’s hand and swung the hammer, striking Pelosi in the head. Officers immediately went inside and were able to restrain DePape.Police found zip ties in the Pelosi residence that they said belonged to DePape, as well as retrieved from his backpack “a roll of tape, white rope, one hammer, one pair of rubber and cloth gloves, and a journal.”Here’s what Paul Pelosi told a police officer as he was going to the hospital:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Pelosi stated he had never seen DePape before. Pelosi was asleep when DePape came into Pelosi’s bedroom and stated he wanted to talk to “Nancy.” When Pelosi told him that Nancy was not there, DePape stated that he would sit and wait. Pelosi stated that his wife would not be home for several days and then DePape reiterated that he would wait. Pelosi was able to go into the bathroom which is when he was able to call 9- 1-1. Pelosi stated that when the officers arrived, that was when DePape struck him with the hammer.Here is what DePape told San Francisco police in an interview following his arrest:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}DePape stated that he was going to hold Nancy hostage and talk to her. If Nancy were to tell DePape the “truth,” he would let her go, and if she “lied,” he was going to break “her kneecaps.” DePape was certain that Nancy would not have told the “truth.” In the course of the interview, DePape articulated he viewed Nancy as the “leader of the pack” of lies told by the Democratic Party. DePape also later explained that by breaking Nancy’s kneecaps, she would then have to be wheeled into Congress, which would show other Members of Congress there were consequences to actions. The complaints adds that DePape “explained that he did not leave after Pelosi’s call to 9-1-1 because, much like the American founding fathers with the British, he was fighting against tyranny without the option of surrender. DePape reiterated this sentiment elsewhere in the interview.”The justice department has announced charges against David DePape, who was arrested on Friday for allegedly breaking in to House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco residence and assaulting her husband, Paul Pelosi.DePape will face a charge of assault on a family member of a US official in retaliation for their work, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, the justice department said. He will also face a charge of attempting to kidnap a US official over their work, for which he could face a maximum of 20 years in prison.Following DePape’s early Friday morning arrest for the attack, which left Paul Pelosi needing surgery for a skull fracture along with other injuries, San Francisco’s police chief announced DePape was being held on suspicion of several charges, including attempted murder. The city’s district attorney is expected to formally level charges against him today, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.Donald Trump has filed an emergency petition to the supreme court, asking it to halt the release of six years of his tax returns to the House ways and means committee, Bloomberg Law reports.The Internal Revenue Service was on 3 November expected to turn over the documents to the Democratic-led committee, after the former president lost repeated lower court decisions to stop Congress from seeing the returns.Trump defied political norms and refused to turn over his tax filings during his first run for the presidency in 2016, saying they were being audited. He maintained that stance throughout his presidency and afterwards.Here’s more on the petition, from Bloomberg Law:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The case presents “important questions about the separation of powers that will affect every future President,” Trump’s lawyers argued. Allowing the House Ways and Means Committee to obtain a president’s tax returns would “render the office of the Presidency vulnerable to invasive information demands from political opponents in the legislative branch,” they added.
Trump’s lawyers also questioned the committee’s reasons for why it wanted his financial records, claiming the true purpose was to release Trump’s tax documents “to the public for the sake of exposure.” They argued that the judges who initially heard the case showed too much deference to the committee and ran afoul of a balancing test laid out earlier by the Supreme Court in a fight over Congress’ access to Trump’s financial records, Trump v Mazars.
Trump’s request to stop the committee from immediately getting the documents will go to Chief Justice John Roberts. Roberts, who handles emergency matters out of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, could act on Trump’s request by himself or circulate it to the other justices for a vote.The six-justice conservative majority on the supreme court has shown skepticism towards universities’ race-based admissions policies during oral arguments today, the Associated Press reports.The court is hearing two cases concerning the University of North Carolina and Harvard University, in which the court’s six conservative justices could potentially ban the use of race as a factor in college admissions, a practice known as affirmative action.Such a decision would be the latest example of the court overturning longstanding precedent, after five of its nine justices earlier this year struck down Roe v Wade and allowed states to ban abortion.The AP reports that several members of the conservative bloc are known foes of the policy, and showed no indication of changing their minds about it during ongoing oral arguments in the two cases.Here’s more from the AP’s story:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}During arguments in the first of two cases, the court sounded split along ideological lines on the issue of affirmative action.
Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s second Black justice who has a long record of opposition to affirmative action programs, noted he didn’t go to racially diverse schools. “I’ve heard the word ‘diversity’ quite a few times and I don’t have a clue what it means,” the conservative justice said at one point. At another point he said: “Tell me what the educational benefits are?”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, another conservative, pointed to one of the court’s previous affirmative action cases and said it anticipated an end to the use of affirmative action, saying it was “dangerous, and it has to have an end point.” When, she asked, is that end point?
Justice Samuel Alito likened affirmative action to a race in which a minority applicant gets to “start five yards closer to the finish line.” But liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s first Hispanic justice, rejected that comparison saying what universities are doing is looking at students as a whole.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s newest justice and its first Black female, also said that race was being used at the University of North Carolina as part of a broad review of applicants along 40 different factors.
“They’re looking at the full person with all of these characteristics,” she said.
Justice Elena Kagan called universities the “pipelines to leadership in our society” and suggested that without affirmative action minority enrollment will drop.
“I thought part of what it meant to be an American and to believe in American pluralism is that actually our institutions, you know, are reflective of who we are as a people in all our variety,” she said.
The Supreme Court has twice upheld race-conscious college admissions programs in the past 19 years, including just six years ago.Republican and Democratic political leaders condemned Friday’s attack on Paul Pelosi, husband to speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. But one of Donald Trump’s sons used it as an opportunity for insults, Martin Pengelly reports:In the aftermath of the attack on Paul Pelosi, amid rising concern over rightwing figures stoking violence against political opponents, Donald Trump Jr posted online a crude meme featuring a hammer, the weapon used to attack the husband of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, on Friday.“OMG,” the former president’s son wrote next to the picture, which also had the caption “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready”.The internet backlash was swift but Trump Jr, a full-time provocateur and surrogate for his father, doubled down equally swiftly – posting another, this time clearly homophobic, meme which appears to reference a baseless conspiracy theory about the assault.Donald Trump Jr posts crude memes making light of attack on Paul PelosiRead moreOhio congressman Brad Wenstrup is grieving after his niece died among more than 150 people killed in a crowd crush during Halloween celebrations in South Korea.Wenstrup was the uncle of 20-year-old University of Kentucky nursing student Anne Marie Gieske, who was killed as a crowd of mostly young people flooded Itaewon’s narrow, sloping streets on Saturday. In a statement from his office, the Republican member of the US House of Representatives said he and his wife, Monica, were mourning their niece, whom he described as “a gift from God to our family”.“We loved her so much,” Wenstrup said.Gieske’s parents, Dan and Madonna Gieske, added: “We are completely devastated and heartbroken over the loss of Anne Marie. She was a bright light loved by all. “Anne’s final gift to us was dying in the state of sanctifying grace. We know we will one day be reunited with her in God’s kingdom.”Anne Marie Gieske was one of at least two young Americans to die in South Korea’s worst-ever crowd crush. The other was Steven Blesi, also 20 and a foreign exchange student from Georgia’s Kennesaw State University who was out celebrating having finished some academic exams.Blesi’s father, Steve, told the New York Times that learning of his son’s death was like being stabbed “a hundred million times simultaneously”.Wenstrup has represented Ohio in the US House since 2013. He is running for re-election against Democratic challenger Samantha Meadows during the 8 November midterms.Voters won’t just elect lawmakers and governors in the 8 November elections. In Michigan, they’ll choose whether or not to allow a 90-year-old abortion ban to go into effect. Poppy Noor reports from Ann Arbor:In the spring of this year, Julie Falbaum’s 20-year-old son walked into a frat party filled with about 50 of his peers, holding a stack of petitions. They were for a campaign to protect abortion.“Who wants to be a dad?” he yelled. Like a park-goer throwing bread to pigeons, he chucked the forms around the room and watched as dozens of young men swarmed to sign them.The campaign to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution was already under way here even before Roe fell, and it has become an embittered battle in Michigan – to keep a 90-year-old abortion ban off the books. Campaigners fear that ban would criminalise doctors and pregnant people and deny essential medical care, such as miscarriage medication, now that the constitutional right to abortion no longer exists in the US.The battle in Michigan has brought death threats and vandalism from pro-choice militants. On the anti-choice side, it has involved dirty tactics from the Republican party, which tried to block a petition brought by nearly 800,000 Michiganders over formatting errors, and has peddled a wide campaign of misinformation.Julie Falbaum, a campaigner for the yes campaign on Proposal 3, which would establish reproductive rights, believes her son’s story – that he managed to collect so many signatures at a frat party without a campaign plan – is reflective of a broad coalition of support for “Prop 3”, which is supported by men and women, young people and older people, Republicans and Democrats.“I see Michigan as pivotal to the future of democracy in the United States,” says Deirdre Roney, 60, who travelled from Los Angeles to campaign for the ballot in Detroit, where she grew up. Explaining that Detroit is the biggest voting bloc in Michigan, and that Michigan is one of the swingiest states in the country, she adds: “This is a blueprint. If this passes in Michigan, other states can use it.”‘This is a blueprint’: abortion rights ballot proposal takes off in MichiganRead moreJoe Biden will this afternoon mull levying a tax on energy companies’ profits in a speech planned for 4:30 pm. The last-minute address comes as Democrats look to reclaim credibility with voters on their handling of the economy ahead of next week’s midterm elections, which will decide the balance of power in Congress for the coming two years.Here’s what else happened today:
Biden will reunite with Barack Obama in Philadelphia on Saturday to campaign for the state’s Democratic nominees for Senate and governor.
Democrats have a slight advantage in three crucial Senate races, and are in a dead heat for a fourth, according to a New York Times poll.
The supreme court is hearing arguments in two cases that its conservative majority could use to end affirmative action.
In his speech this afternoon on oil companies’ record profits, Joe Biden will discuss whether to impose a windfall tax on energy firms, the Associated Press reports.Citing a person familiar with the matter, Biden will raise the possibility of a tax aimed specifically at energy companies’ profits as a way to encourage them to lower prices at the pump.The president is set to speak at 4:30 pm eastern time to “respond to reports over recent days of major oil companies making record-setting profits even as they refuse to help lower prices at the pump for the American people,” the White House announced earlier today. Rising gas prices have been a major drag on Biden and his Democratic allies’ public support ahead of the 8 November midterms, where polls indicate the state of the economy is voters’ top issue.Wisconsin isn’t just the site of one of the Democratic party’s few chances to add to their majority in the Senate – it’s also pivotal to the future of American democracy, the state’s party chair says.In a lengthy Twitter thread, Ben Wikler lays out what’s at stake in the governorship and statehouse races in the perennial swing state:In this moment, a tiny change in votes in Wisconsin could start a domino effect that could shape the future of American history. For worse, or better.— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) October 31, 2022
Wisconsin is a policy laboratory. If the GOP makes their control voter-proof here, they’ll take those policies nationwide. Read this important story for details. But recognize, too, that this week could open the door to dismantling their control. https://t.co/wjh4jG6iq6— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) October 31, 2022
First, the nightmare scenario: Mandela Barnes and Tony Evers could lose, and Ron Johnson and Tim Michels could win. Republicans could get a veto-proof supermajority in our state legislature. What would happen?— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) October 31, 2022
Wisconsin’s been the tipping point state in the last two presidential elections. Both of those elections came down to less than a percentage point. If democracy breaks even further in Wisconsin, the Electoral College math gets grim—fast. https://t.co/IahUX86yxl— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) October 31, 2022
Tim Michels, running for governor of Wisconsin, has explicitly said that his first priority will be to “fix” the election system by signing all of the voter suppression and election subversion laws that Governor Evers, our Democratic incumbent, has vetoed.https://t.co/a0vgjS18fi— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) October 31, 2022
If Tim Michels rigs our elections, he will likely do it before the April 4, 2023 state Supreme Court election, which will determine the balance of power on Wisconsin’s highest court. The state court could uphold the rigging before the 2024 presidential. https://t.co/txmqPCowSn— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) October 31, 2022
Gov Evers, on the other hand, supports fair elections and has been a brick wall to save our democracy—refusing to concede to Republican attacks and allowing the bipartisan Wisconsin Election Commission to do its job.— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) October 31, 2022
If Tim Michels can scrap the bipartisan Wisconsin Election Commission and install radical Republicans—as he has promised—every rule governing how elections function could be shaped to advance the GOP’s partisan agenda. https://t.co/9DcK3c3CUa— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) October 31, 2022
But if that’s not enough to give Trump a victory, and Trump still loses 2024, Michels could refuse to certify the election.In fact, when asked about it directly, he *only* committed to certifying the election *if* he can fix the election system first. pic.twitter.com/3mo5xWkYWj— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) October 31, 2022
To win the electoral college majority in 2024, we’ll need Wisconsin.And if we lose the governor’s race now, the path to having a free, fair, and secure presidential election becomes stunningly bleak.— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) October 31, 2022
Bernie Sanders is heading to Wisconsin to drum up support for Democratic candidates, the Associated Press reports:.@BernieSanders announces four stops in Wisconsin this week to support Democratic candidates and drive turnoutSanders plans to be in Eau Claire, La Crosse and Madison on Friday and in Oshkosh on SaturdayHis visit comes after former President @BarackObama was in Milwaukee— Scott Bauer (@sbauerAP) October 31, 2022
The state is home to one of Democrats’ other Senate pickup opportunities this year, with lieutenant governor Mandela Barnes trying to unseat incumbent Republican Ron Johnson. Polls have generally shown Johnson with the advantage here.It’s also home to a very tight governors race, where Democratic incumbent Tony Evers is up for a second term against GOP challenger Tim Michels. More

Paul Pelosi attack suspect charged with attempted kidnapping and assaultSuspect who faces state and federal charges told police he wanted to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage and ‘break her kneecaps’ The man accused of attacking Paul Pelosi, the husband of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, told police he wanted to hold the congresswoman hostage and “break her kneecaps”, authorities in California said on Monday afternoon.David DePape, 42, confronted a sleeping Paul Pelosi in the couple’s San Francisco townhouse bedroom shortly before 2.30am last Friday morning, according to a federal affidavit filed in court on Monday.Federal prosecutors have filed two charges against DePape, days after police say he broke into the Pelosis’ home and struck the Democratic House of Representatives leader’s 82-year-old husband in the head with a hammer.Paul Pelosi was left seriously injured in the attack and was in surgery for several hours on Friday, as his wife hurried back from Washington DC to the hospital where he was taken. He was operated on for a fractured skull as well as suffering serious wounding to his arms and hands.DePape is charged federally with influencing, impeding or retaliating against a federal official by threatening or injuring a family member. He also faces one count of attempted kidnapping of a US official on account of the performance of official duties. The charges carry sentences of up to 30 years if there is a conviction.DePape also faces multiple charges at the state level – including attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, burglary, elder abuse and threatening a public official. Those charges were filed separately by the San Francisco district attorney, Brooke Jenkins, on Monday.Jenkins called the attack “politically motivated” and said the state charges are punishable by a prison sentence of 13 years to life.Jenkins rejected numerous conspiracy theories that swirled into the public domain over the weekend and on Monday, despite bipartisan condemnation of the attack from national political leaders on Friday, and an outcry over the rise in political violence and threats to lawmakers, their staff and families in a bitterly divided society.Jenkins confirmed that the assailant was targeting Nancy Pelosi when he broke into the couple’s home. She wasn’t there and DePape, after calling out “Where’s Nancy?”, confronted Paul Pelosi with a hammer.The justice department’s complaint contained some harrowing details, including more information about Paul Pelosi and DePape wrestling over a hammer when police showed up, which officers shouted at them to drop.“DePape pulled the hammer from Pelosi’s hand and swung the hammer, striking Pelosi in the head. Officers immediately went inside and were able to restrain DePape,” the complaint stated.Police found zip ties in the Pelosi residence that they said belonged to DePape, as well as retrieving from the suspect’s backpack “a roll of tape, white rope, one hammer, one pair of rubber and cloth gloves, and a journal”.The justice department reported that Paul Pelosi said he had never seen DePape before. “DePape came into Pelosi’s bedroom and stated he wanted to talk to Nancy.“When Pelosi told him that Nancy was not there, DePape stated that he would sit and wait. Pelosi stated that his wife would not be home for several days and then DePape reiterated that he would wait. Pelosi was able to go into the bathroom which is when he was able to call 911.”San Francisco police further reported, according to the justice department, that DePape said he was going to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage and talk to her.“If Nancy were to tell DePape the ‘truth’, he would let her go, and if she ‘lied’, he was going to break ‘her kneecaps’,” the police recounted, adding that: “‘DePape was certain that Nancy would not have told the “truth’. In the course of the interview, DePape articulated he viewed Nancy as the ‘leader of the pack’ of lies told by the Democratic party. DePape also later explained that by breaking Nancy’s kneecaps, she would then have to be wheeled into Congress, which would show other members of Congress there were consequences to actions,” according to the complaint.When Paul Pelosi managed to dial 911, officials have highlighted how the quick actions of the dispatcher may have saved his life.With the line left open by Pelosi, the dispatcher could hear the conversation between him and his assailant. Two minutes later, the police arrived.“I truly believe, based on what I know, that it was lifesaving,” Jenkins told ABC News.She had told reporters on Sunday that there was no evidence of any connection between the assailant and his victim, despite far-fetched theories being peddled by the right, amplified by the new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, which drew criticism from liberals.The FBI on Monday bolstered Jenkins’s countering of conspiratorial claims.Congressman Eric Swalwell decried a rising tide of violent threats against lawmakers and said his chief of staff spends many hours each week dealing with it.The Associated Press contributed reportingTopicsNancy PelosiCaliforniaUS crimeSan FranciscoUS politicsnewsReuse this content More