US Politics

Pence blames Trump for events leading to January 6 in new memoirFormer vice-president says meeting at which advisers led by Giuliani urged Trump to not accept election defeat was ‘a new low’ A post-election meeting at which advisers led by Rudy Giuliani attacked campaign lawyers and urged Donald Trump not to accept his election defeat was “a new low” for a president “well acquainted with rough-and-tumble debates”, Mike Pence writes in a forthcoming memoir.Of the meeting in November 2020, the former vice-president writes: “In the end, that day the president made the fateful decision to put Giuliani and [attorney] Sidney Powell in charge of the legal strategy … The seeds were being sown for a tragic day in January.”‘Lachlan gets fired the day Rupert dies’: Murdoch biography stokes succession rumorsRead moreBy openly blaming Trump for events leading to the January 6 insurrection, when a pro-Trump mob attacked the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory, Pence risks angering Republicans he must court as he considers the next nomination for president.His memoir, So Help Me God, will be published on 15 November. Axios published a short excerpt on Monday.Pence writes: “What began as a briefing that Thursday afternoon quickly turned into a contentious back-and-forth between the campaign lawyers and a growing group of outside attorneys led by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, an attorney who had represented Gen Mike Flynn [Trump’s first national security adviser, fired for lying to the FBI].“After the campaign lawyers gave a sober and somewhat pessimistic report on the state of election challenges, the outside cast of characters went on the attack … Giuliani told the president over the speakerphone, ‘Your lawyers are not telling you the truth, Mr President.’“Even in an office well acquainted with rough-and-tumble debates, it was a new low …. [and] went downhill from there.”Trump’s culpability for the Capitol attack has been examined and presented by the House January 6 committee and is being investigated by the US justice department.The former president is in legal jeopardy on other fronts: election subversion, the unauthorized retention of White House papers after the end of his presidency, his business affairs and a defamation lawsuit from a writer who alleges he raped her.Trump denies wrongdoing and remains dominant in polls for 2024. He is reported to be seeking campaign hires while waiting until after the midterm elections next week to make a formal announcement.Pence’s presidential ambition is no secret but although the January 6 committee has presented him as a hero for refusing to cooperate with Trump’s election subversion, he has work to do if he is to persuade Republican voters he is the man to take on Biden.Polling gives Trump huge leads over his nearest challenger, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis. If Trump is removed from the equation, DeSantis enjoys healthy leads over figures including Pence, the Texas senator Ted Cruz and Donald Trump Jr.TopicsPolitics booksMike PenceDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

In western culture today, demons exist as something of a paradox. Religious belief in them is often presented as marginal. Many mainstream Christian denominations are silent or give them little prominence.

In 2014, for example, the Church of England removed references to the devil from its baptismal rites. When questioned, Bishop Robert Paterson stated that the devil “has been turned into a cartoon character of no particular malevolence”.

At the same time, American politics is replete with demons. Pentecostal ideas of “spiritual warfare” – the use of prayer to battle invisible demonic forces – have become mainstream and tied to ascendant Christian nationalist movements.

Belief in satanic forces behind national and global politics are core tenets of conspiracy movements like QAnon, which claims (without evidence) that liberal actors and politicians engage in satanic ritual abuse of children to prolong their lives.

Western demons remain alive and well in popular culture and contemporary politics. One of us (Jonathon) has researched the continued presence of demons in contemporary culture from gaming to US elections.

The other (Zohar) has completed a study demonstrating the complexity of demons in medieval religious traditions and folk tales. And it shows the enduring relevance of these stories for contemporary societies, as such stories continue to be told as a living oral tradition to this day.

Yet it is hard to completely refute Bishop Paterson’s assertion. The devil’s swing between cartoon character and active threat is part of the figure’s complex history in the modern world. While once seen as threats to human souls, demons today are much more ambiguous figures.

The lighthearted and cartoonish depiction of the devil in modern popular culture has managed to undermine the figure’s ability to threaten and terrify.
Everett Collection Inc / Alamy

Malevolence, benevolence, ambivalence

This ambiguity is in line with non-Christian and older perceptions of demons. In the ancient near east, demons were perceived as good, evil or morally neutral. Liminality (existing at a boundary or threshold) and ambivalence are essential characteristic of demons. Christianity repressed these aspects, identifying demons as unequivocally evil.

Traditions such as Islam maintain a long-standing ambivalent depiction of demons and satan, who can be rebellious and believers, deceitful and teachers, benevolent and enemies. In Mediterranean Muslim societies and beyond, jinn (spirits which can be benevolent or malevolent) remain a concrete part of life, due to cultural heritage and religious tradition.

The Qur’an depicts the jinn as an intelligible species, alongside humans and angels. This religious and cultural context is a powerful influence on notions of health and disease, too. For example, the notion of possession by jinn can be seen in Muslim societies, but also in the UK, among communities from Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Middle East or north Africa. Sometimes, modern medicine and an Islamic religious authority are involved in such cases.

The devil and popular culture

For many westerners today, however, demons are more often figures of popular culture. Yet such depictions often echo their ambivalent ancient and non-Christian characterisations. In the TV show The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018–2020), the devil is both an object of devotion for several core characters and a primary antagonist.

In Lucifer (2016–2021), he abandons rulership of hell to run a nightclub in Los Angeles and assist local police in solving crimes. These works often take the devil’s theological origins more as inspiration than as gospel.

Lucifer: a crime-solving incarnation of the devil.
Netflix

The titular character of Lucifer is drawn from the universe of Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel, The Sandman – itself subject to a recent TV adaptation. And Sandman’s Lucifer owes more to the Satan of John Milton’s epic 1667 poem Paradise Lost than the Christian Bible.

Milton’s portrayal of Satan wrestling with his damnation inspired others to reflect on themes of freedom, power, justice and self that recast the devil in morally ambivalent, even heroic ways. Beyond simply figures of evil, demons became artistic motifs to explore of the struggles of free will, the opposition to tyranny and the processing of grief.

This ambivalence exists in other religious traditions. Sufi (mystical) Islam portrays Iblis (Satan) as tragic. He was disobedient of God’s command to the angels to bow before the newly created Adam because he preferred monotheism (only prostrate oneself to God) over obedience.

Yet as Kevin Spacey’s character, Robert “Verbal” Kint, says in The Usual Suspects: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

This phrase echoes a Sufi warning against turning one’s back on demons: as soon as they are considered dead, they will rise and stab the person in the back. For practitioners of “spiritual warfare”, this is exactly what has happened. To them, the decline in literal belief in demons and the diversity of media depictions are signs not of the evil’s decline – but his ascent.

The Christian right and the devil

The Christian nationalist movement in America today is exemplary here. As Jonathon analyses in their book, Passing Orders (2021), members of this movement view social liberalisation and cultural change as demonic.

Reproductive and LGBT rights and recent movements for racial justice such as Black Lives Matter are key examples of such changes. Often this is framed as a struggle against an imagined “secular humanism”, the driving, diabolic ideology of a secular world that has forgotten the devil exists, and which thus acts on his behalf.

Despite common perceptions of them as inherently evil, the place of demons in modern society is often ambiguous. In line with their depictions in non-Christian contexts such as Muslim and ancient Greek traditions, demons exceed simple representations of evil, becoming symbolic of concepts such as freedom, wilfulness, rebellion, passion and moral grey areas. This ambiguity becomes especially stark when placed against differences in cultural contexts and historical eras. More

US abortions decrease by 10,000 since repeal of Roe v Wade in JuneResearch by #WeCount shows a 6% decline, with fall of 22,000 in most restrictive states partially offset by 12,000 rise elsewhere There have been at least 10,000 fewer abortions since the nationwide abortion rights established by Roe v Wade were repealed by the US supreme court in June.New research from the national research project #WeCount shows that with federal abortion protections rolled back, there have been 10,570 fewer legal abortions – a 6% decline – than estimates in April before the June ruling. ‘This is a blueprint’: abortion rights ballot proposal takes off in MichiganRead more#WeCount is a national abortion reporting project with the Society of Family Planning, an abortion and contraception science group. The research project has been tracking changes in abortion access since the overturning of Roe v Wade, collecting data from medical offices, hospitals, telemedicine providers and clinics.The data does not include self-managed abortions, which could lower the overall decrease in terminations, according to the New York Times.The recent statistics are a net calculation, meaning the total loss accounts for a decreased number of abortions in some states as well as an increase in abortions in other areas, for people who traveled out of state to terminate their pregnancies.In the states that saw declines in their abortion numbers, including 13 states that have banned most abortions, terminated pregnancies decreased by about 22,000.Meanwhile, other states that have protected abortion saw about 12,000 more abortions performed.The published data shows that there has not been a total absorption of patients from other states who can no longer access abortion services, meaning there were thousands of people who “felt they had no options”, Ushma Upadhyay – #WeCount co-chairperson and a public health social scientist as well as professor at the University of California, San Francisco – said to FiveThirtyEight.The data suggest that people in restrictive states traveled far to access an abortion, a burden that is exacerbated for people with fewer financial resources.“Some of these states where abortion was banned – Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, for example – are some of the poorest states in our country, and people would have to cross multiple state lines to get to another state where abortion remains legal,” said Kari White, a University of Texas at Austin researcher who is on the #WeCount research steering committee, to the New York Times.States have also been exploring possible ways to target criminalizing interstate travel for an abortion, creating an additional barrier for those who are living in restrictive states.“Even for the people who make it to another state, this is a hardship,” White added.TopicsAbortionUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Georgia governor debate: Kemp silent on question over harsher abortion restrictionsRepublican Brian Kemp and Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams spar in final gubernatorial debate before midterms In the final televised debate with Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams before their November election, Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, refused to say whether he would support harsher abortion restrictions if re-elected to a second term and if fellow Republicans dominating the state legislature sent them to his desk.Utah: can an ex-CIA independent oust an incumbent Republican senator?Read moreAt WSB-TV’s Channel 2 Action debate Sunday, Kemp, a Republican, said it was not his “desire to go move the needle any further” on abortion restrictions in Georgia, adding that he would look into additional restrictions passed by state lawmakers “when the time comes”. Kemp at a previous debate had said he “would not” support new abortion limits.The Sunday night debate heightened an already contentious rematch over the governorship. Kemp narrowly defeated Abrams in 2018, and polling shows he holds a lead over Abrams more than a week before the election. Abrams sought to draw a stark contrast with Kemp over the issues of guns, the economy, crime and voting restrictions.“Under Brian Kemp’s four years as governor, crime has gone up, hospitals have closed and communities are in turmoil,” Abrams said in her closing arguments.The state already effectively bars most abortions after Kemp signed an abortion law in 2019 that prohibits the procedure six weeks into a pregnancy. The law went into effect after the US supreme court in June overturned abortion rights nationwide, established nearly 50 years earlier by Roe v Wade.A trial has recently begun over whether the state’s imposition of the 2019 law is constitutional.“Let’s be clear, he did not say he wouldn’t,” Abrams said in response to Kemp’s remarks Sunday. She tied Kemp to Georgia US Senate candidate Herschel Walker, who is accused by two women of pressuring them to have an abortion, even though Walker has stated he is staunchly opposed to the termination of pregnancies. Walker denies the allegations.“He refuses to protect us. He refuses to defend us,” Abrams said of Kemp. “And yet he defended Herschel Walker, saying that he didn’t want to be involved in the personal life of his running mate.”By contrast, Abrams supported legal abortions before the point of “viability”, noting that the decision should be made “between a doctor and a woman – as a medical choice.” Kemp contended that Abrams’ stance shifted on whether she would support new restrictions brought to her.“It is willful ignorance or misleading lies that change what I’ve said,” Abrams said. “But what I’ve also always said is that there should not be arbitrary timelines set by men who do not understand biology.”TopicsGeorgiaUS politicsStacey AbramsUS midterm elections 2022RepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

‘Lachlan gets fired the day Rupert dies’: Murdoch biography stokes succession rumorsNew book by Australian reporter Paddy Manning hints at Succession-style feud with ramifications for US rightwing politics It’s long been thought that the succession plan for Lachlan Murdoch to take control of Fox Corporation and News Corp was set in stone for when his 91-year-old father, Rupert Murdoch dies.But a new book is stoking speculation that Murdoch’s oldest son might be ousted in a Succession-style feud with his family, in a move with potentially huge ramifications for Fox News, the TV network that dominates US rightwing politics, according to a new biography of the Anglo-Australian media heir.The author, Paddy Manning, writes: “A Wall Street analyst who has covered the Murdoch business for decades and is completely au fait with the breakdown in the relationship between the brothers [Lachlan and James Murdoch], volunteers off the record that it would be ‘fair to assume Lachlan gets fired the day Rupert dies’.”The Successor: The High-Stakes Life of Lachlan Murdoch will be published in the US on 15 November and is out in Australia now.Manning is an Australian journalist who has written for outlets including the Guardian. His previous books include biographies of Malcolm Turnbull, the former Australian prime minister, and Nathan Tinkler, a mining entrepreneur.The title of Manning’s biography of Lachlan Murdoch echoes that of the TV hit Succession, the HBO story of an ageing media tycoon, played by Brian Cox, and his family’s struggles to succeed him.Lachlan Murdoch, 51 and Rupert Murdoch’s oldest son, has led the family media businesses with his father since 2014.James Murdoch, 49, resigned from the board of News Corp in July 2020. He said then: “My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions.”The younger Murdoch has since emerged as a backer of progressive and environmental concerns, in Manning’s words, “ploughing millions into the defeat of [Donald] Trump, climate activism, and other political causes”.But Lachlan Murdoch has remained in a position of near-unrivaled power in rightwing media and politics, overseeing US properties including the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, the TV network with a near-symbiotic relationship with Trump and the Republican party.Though Manning reports a potentially surprising $1,500 donation Lachlan Murdoch made in 2020 to Pete Buttigieg, then a Democratic presidential hopeful, now the Biden administration’s transportation secretary, he also reports that “realising the potential for embarrassment, [Murdoch] asked for it back and was duly refunded”.The Successor covers the older Murdoch son’s life from childhood through youthful business ventures including investment in Australian rugby league, to his departure from his father’s businesses in 2005 and return nearly a decade later.Lachlan Murdoch has become a champion of the rightward march of Fox News, which inspired his brother’s resignation from the News Corp board. As described by Manning, the older Murdoch son has for example remained supportive of Tucker Carlson, the primetime host and provocateur who regularly espouses far-right views.But all four grownup Murdoch children – Lachlan and James, their sister Elisabeth Murdoch and their half-sister Prudence MacLeod – will be key players in the eventual succession.“In a plausible scenario,” Manning writes, “after Rupert has passed and his shares are dispersed among the four adult children, the three on the other side of Lachlan could choose to manifest control over all of the Murdoch businesses, and to do it in a way that enhances democracies around the world rather than undermining them.“In this scenario, the role of Fox News has become so controversial inside the family that control of the trust is no longer just about profit and loss at the Murdoch properties. In one view that has currency among at least some of the Murdoch children, it is in the long-term interests for democracies around the world for there to be four shareholders in the family trust who are active owners in the business.”Murdoch’s succession: who wins from move to reunite Fox and News Corp?Read moreLast month, Rupert Murdoch was reported to be seeking to merge News Corp, which owns newspapers outside the US including the Times, the Sun and the Australian, with Fox, which includes Fox News and Fox Sports, which shows prized NFL games.A former Murdoch senior executive told the Guardian then the plan had been “in the works for two years. I give it a 75% chance it will happen, 25% that it will be blocked. It’s all about Lachlan. Rupert is in his 90s – this is his last deal, it’s succession planning.”Discussing the belief that “Lachlan gets fired the day Rupert dies”, Manning writes that it is “a formula for instability and intra-family feuds that must weigh on the minds of directors of both Fox and News Corporation as they contemplate the mortality of the 91-year-old founder, although they deny it.“A source close to members of the Murdoch family questions the extent of succession planning by the boards of Fox or News Corporation and whether discussions among the directors can be genuinely independent, as corporate governance experts would like.“‘Rupert has total control over all the companies as long as he is alive,’ the source says. ‘It’s an unrealistic expectation that the boards of those companies are going to use their voices to manifest independence. What is their succession plan? What if something happens to Lachlan?’”TopicsBooksRupert MurdochLachlan MurdochJames MurdochFox NewsNews CorporationUS press and publishingnewsReuse this content More

What drove the man who attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband?Francine ProseAccording to the US Capitol police, there were 9,621 threats against members of Congress in 2021. It’s surprising that there aren’t more Surely I’m not the only person haunted by visions of 82-year-old Paul Pelosi, the husband of House speaker Nancy Pelosi, struggling with an intruder in the early hours this past Friday. It’s not hard to imagine the terror that Pelosi must have felt as he made his coded phone call to the police, telling them that someone had broken into his San Francisco home. And it’s all too easy to picture his assailant, David DePape, calling out, “Where’s Nancy?”, the same cry that went up from the insurrectionists roaming the halls of the US Capitol on 6 January.In fact, the only thing that’s hard to comprehend is why, given the current political climate, incidents like this one don’t occur more often. According to the US Capitol police, there were 9,621 threats against members of Congress in 2021, and the frequency of those disturbing emails and phone calls appears to be increasing. Republican and Democrats alike have been warned that they and their families will be killed, and some have wisely taken advantage of the provision that allows them to use their campaign funds to pay for private security teams.A secret bathroom 911 call: how Paul Pelosi saved his own life Read moreTighter surveillance and more armed patrols may make our politicians more secure, but it’s precisely the sort of Band-aid that we have been pasting over the deep wounds from which our society suffers. The quick fix of hiring more guards is not unlike New York City’s plan for reducing subway crime by beefing up police presence. A mugger might be deterred by the sight of a uniformed officer, but the people pushing commuters onto the tracks are more likely to be heeding the directives of the voices inside their heads than checking for the location of the nearest CCTV camera.One could argue that David DePape has more in common with these unhinged attackers than with protesters expressing their concerns outside the US supreme court. And that difference suggests that violent extremism and the descent into the rabbit hole of conspiracy theory be understood – and treated – as a form of disturbance rather than a sign of voter dissatisfaction and another symptom of our political divisions.Of course, many presumably “sane” politicians are exploiting and exacerbating the widespread rage and paranoia – spreading lies about the evils of science and the government’s plot to stifle our freedoms – in order to attract attention and increase their voter base. But though it’s despicable to condone and encourage violence, it’s not the same as committing it. It wasn’t Marjorie Taylor Greene who fractured Paul Pelosi’s skull.The Republican party’s obsession with gun ownership has made deadly weapons freely available to the mentally ill, but few school shooters have claimed to have slaughtered innocent students because Joe Biden stole the election. During the recent outcry over Kanye West’s odious antisemitic and anti-Black remarks, the fact that he has been diagnosed as bipolar dropped out of the public conversation. And while it’s true that mental instability is not necessarily the cause of – and certainly not an excuse for – prejudice and hatred, it’s hard to argue, as California psychologist Bedford Palmer II has done, that Ye’s instability had absolutely nothing to do with his destructive downward spiral.Almost daily, it seems, we read another article about the mental health crisis afflicting our country – and much of the world – in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Anyone who has spent any time lately in an American city knows how dire the situation has become. During an eight-block walk in downtown Manhattan, I counted three people in severe mental distress – and those were just the obvious cases.Yet no one, as far as I know, has introduced a workable, far-reaching, effective solution for fully addressing – let alone remedying – our problems. We’ve arrested and tried dozens of the January 6 rioters, but I’ve yet to read one essay that brought me significantly closer to understanding the psyche of someone who would grab a can of bear spray and call for Mike Pence’s blood. We know that racism and inequality fuel the anger that incites political violence, but I imagine that few of those who push subway riders off platforms are doing so because they fear being replaced by Jews and people of color. Many of the perpetrators of the anti-Asian attacks in New York City during the past year were found to have been recently released from homeless shelters and mental hospitals.I’m not suggesting that we stigmatize mental illness more egregiously than we already do. Rather I’m proposing that we recognize the need for – and figure out –some way to remedy the sort of instability that sent David DePape into the Pelosis’ house in the middle of the night. Our cities and states – and the federal government – need to come up with better plans for intervention. Perhaps Kanye West’s former corporate sponsors might want to stop whining about how much money they’re losing by severing ties with him – and donate some of the profits they’re earning without him to fund outreach and treatment centers.More cameras, more cops, longer jail terms – it’s not enough, and ultimately the surveillance and punishment model is not going to provide a lasting solution. Gun control would be a huge help in reducing the senseless bloodshed, but let’s remember: Paul Pelosi and David DePape were struggling over a hammer, not a long gun. We need to come up with a more innovative and comprehensive remedy for our mental health crisis. Because the fact is: we need help.
Francine Prose is a former president of Pen American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
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Utah: can an ex-CIA independent oust an incumbent Republican senator?The race between Evan McMullin and Senator Mike Lee in the reliably red state is tightening as Democrats stand aside Utah is usually reliably Republican turf but in this year’s midterm elections a Senate race in the Mormon-dominated state could see a remarkable upset – and one that could damage the Republican party’s ambitions to capture the Senate.Independent challenger Evan McMullin, a former CIA agent who unsuccessfully ran for president against Donald Trump in 2016, is seeing his race tighten against Mike Lee, a two-time Republican incumbent who initially supported Trump’s legal challenge to the election but later voted to certify it.What are the US midterm elections and who’s running?Read moreAn October poll, commissioned by the Deseret News and the Hinckley Institute of Politics, shows Lee with a four-point lead with 12% of voters still undecided.Jason Perry, director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics, calls this Senate race the tightest Utah has seen in decades. The race is also unique in Utah’s history because it’s not a traditional Republican versus Democrat challenge.“McMullin’s candidacy is an experiment and will be the ultimate test to see if a third-party challenger can really take down a well-known Republican in what has been a reliably red state,” Perry said.McMullin has never held public office. In addition to his service in the CIA, he advised the committee on foreign affairs in the US House of Representatives and was the chief policy director for the House Republican Conference. In order to win, Perry says McMullin will need to get almost all of the liberal voters, all of the independent voters and most of the moderate voters. The most recent Hinckley poll showed McMullin pulling 42% of moderates and 70% of liberals.Key liberal thought leaders in the state, including conservation activists in the state’s billion-dollar outdoor industry, have endorsed McMullin.“Lee believes that federal land ownership in Utah is hurting the Utah economy. His opponent, Evan McMullin understands the value of Utah’s public lands,” the Black Diamond Equipment founder Peter Metcalf wrote in the Salt Lake Tribune.Contrasting McMullin’s growing moderate and liberal support, Lee “owns the conservative end of the political spectrum” because of his reputation as a “consistent fiscal conservative”, Perry explained. His base is solid, he adds, and they show up. Lee’s campaign spokesperson, Matt Lusty, claims the incumbent senator still has a significant lead.“Senator Lee knows how essential it is for Republicans to regain control of the Senate to push back the disastrous Biden agenda that is crushing Utah families with unchecked spending and runaway inflation – but let’s be clear, Mike Lee is leading this race,” Lusty said. The Lee campaign points to McMullin running as an independent but still receiving Democratic endorsements and funding as a way that he’s pulling the wool over the eyes of the state’s voters.“President Trump was much less popular in Utah than prior Republican leaders and President Biden is not faring better,” Perry said. “This is why Lee is trying to peg McMullin as a Biden candidate and why McMullin is trying to tie Lee to Trump.”Though Trump has endorsed Lee, the incumbent senator has strategically attempted to distance himself from the former US president by claiming he voted less in line with Trump than all Republican senators except Rand Paul and Susan Collins, the Associated Press reports.Lee has secured a string of powerful Utah endorsements, including the governor, Spencer Cox, but missing from that list is Senator Mitt Romney, known for being a moderate Republican who works across party lines.Earlier this month on Tucker Carlson Tonight, Lee called McMullin a “closeted Democrat”, urged Romney to endorse him, and asked members of Romney’s family to contribute to his campaign. But there is a likely problem: Lee voted against three bipartisan bills that Romney was behind – on gun safety, semiconductor manufacturing and infrastructure – and refused to endorse Romney in his 2018 Senate campaign.Romney’s lack of endorsement is, no doubt, also part of a ripple effect of how Lee responded during the January 6 attack on the Capitol. In text messages obtained by CNN, Lee offered the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, his unequivocal support “to exhaust every legal and constitutional remedy at your disposal to restore Americans faith in our elections” and even tried to connect Meadows with the election-denying attorney Sidney Powell.Lee later voted to certify the election results.The McMullin campaign is seizing on Lee’s association with Trump and his role in January 6. “Lee has become the poster child for the politics of extremism and division,” said McMullin’s communications director, Kelsey Koenen Witt. “When it comes to legislating, it’s his way or the highway. And as a result, he gets nothing done for Utahns. After nearly 12 years in the Senate, Lee has only passed 10 bills and a good number of them [were] merely named federal buildings.”Outside Utah, Lee is perhaps most well-known for placing a hold on 2019 legislation that would provide 9/11 responders compensation, arguing he wanted to ensure the fund had proper oversight to prevent fraud and abuse, the Washington Post reported. In 2016, he was one of two senators to vote against imposing sanctions on Russia for their role in the presidential election. In May, Lee also voted against providing emergency supplemental provisions to Ukraine.Witt contrasts Lee’s voting record with Romney, who she argues has pursued “good-faith, bipartisan negotiations”. Utah voters, she claims, “are exhausted of the division and party politics”. As a result, the Utah Democratic party and the politically moderate United Utah party, declined to nominate their own candidates for Senate and joined McMullin’s coalition, she adds.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022UtahRepublicansUS politicsUS SenatefeaturesReuse this content More

‘This is a blueprint’: abortion rights ballot proposal takes off in Michigan Campaigners feel groundswell of support for proposal to stop a 1931 abortion ban from going into effectIn 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.Abortion on the ballot: here are the US states voting on a woman’s right to chooseRead moreThe 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 seen death threats and vandalism from pro-choice militants. On the anti-choice side, it has involved dirty tactics from the Republican party, who tried to block a petition brought by nearly 800,000 Michiganders over formatting errors, and who have peddled a wide campaign of misinformation.Julie Falbaum, a campaigner for the yes campaign on Proposal 3, which would enshrine 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.”Indeed, Michigan’s elections are at the center of a national abortion debate that has spiraled to extremes. Since the constitutional right to abortion fell on 24 June, almost half of US states have banned it, or tried to.“I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more votes for [Proposal] 3 than for the governor’s race,” says Jeff Timmer, a senior adviser for the Lincoln Project, a coalition of Republicans and former Republicans who campaign to keep Trump out of office.Timmer, who was a Republican party strategist for more than 30 years, says statewide abortion bans are turning people off the party.“The Republicans have used abortion for decades as a means to motivate their pro-life religious base. And for most everybody who was engaged in that rhetoric, it was always theoretical. They never really had to worry about real-life consequences – and now they do,” says Timmer.“It’s a simple question of: how long should my daughter, my sister, my wife, my granddaughter go to prison? Should my doctor go to prison? Quite honestly, that’s crazy. Most rational people would say no to that.”Alisha Mcneeli, 44, a lifelong Republican who lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, will be voting for the proposal, which also enshrines contraception rights and IVF.“I have always been a pro-choice Republican,” says Mcneeli, 44, a community outreach director for the Michigan child protection registry.“Since I’ve become a mother, I’m more pro-choice than ever. Being a parent is the hardest thing – physically, emotionally and financially – that I’ve ever done in my life. I wholeheartedly believe that if a woman is not ready, she should not be forced to.”A 2016 Trump voter, Mcneeli will also vote Democratic for her national representatives in the midterms. She says Lindsey Graham touting a national 15-week ban on abortion – a proposal that didn’t pass in the Senate – could be enough to turn her away from the party for ever.“I feel like I’m slowly already doing that. He promised this was not going to even be talked about at the federal level. He completely lied. That makes me sick, I’m so angry about it,” she said.Falbaum says the biggest change in attitude she has seen since she started working on the petition earlier this year is the gender split.“In the past, it was a woman’s issue. It was: ‘Talk to my wife, my girlfriend, I don’t know about those things.’ And now I hear men not only understanding that it’s not a woman’s issue, but actively supporting it,” explains Falbaum.Jeff Bolanger, 69, is one of them. He lives in downtown Ann Arbor, a small and relatively liberal city near Detroit that is home to the University of Michigan. “I don’t really think it’s appropriate to control people’s choices about that,” Bolanger said.Joaquin Gabaldon, 30, also says he’s voting yes when Falbaum and Roney knock his door.“I mean it’s healthcare, it’s rather straightforward,” he said.In Wayne county’s Grosse Point, a wealthy, mostly white, mostly Democratic area that has recently seen more election deniers and Trump supporters, several people on the doorstep said they hadn’t heard of Proposal 3, but would support it in theory. In suburban Sterling Heights, in the divided Macomb county, Ed Bristow, 60, who works in human resources, opposes Proposal 3: “It just cuts into the sovereignty of the family unit.”Democrats in Michigan joke that the signage of the no campaign – “Vote no. Too confusing. Too extreme” – makes them look silly: absent a real critique of the ballot initiative, instead they focus on making voters feel they can’t understand for themselves. But a lot of emotive misinformation is circulating, including materials from the Catholic church that suggest a number of policies could arise from voting yes including child sterilisation and abortion without parental consent – none of which has been proposed.Darci McConnell, the communications director for the yes campaign, cites recent polling showing 64% of Michiganders support Proposal 3. “They’re very invested in misinformation, because they know people don’t want to ban abortion – that a 1931 law has no support,” she says of the no campaign.“There’s been a lot of misinformation,” says Pastor John Duckworth of Wayne county. “People have been saying you don’t have to be a doctor to perform an abortion [under Proposal] 3. They’re talking about gender reassignment surgery. None of that is true.”Referring to African Americans, he said: “There weren’t many laws from 1931 that benefited my community.“Now of course, [black voters] are not a monolith,” he added. “But alongside Roe came protections for gay marriage, for interracial marriage, for contraception … This is about civil rights. For people who have had their bodies controlled for hundreds of years, this is very scary.”Falbaum described a middle-aged man she saw on the day the supreme court decision leaked. She went out to set up her petition stand to get abortion on the ballot at a farmer’s market in downtown Ann Arbor – only someone had gotten there before her.“I said, ‘You’re first in line for the concert tickets!’” jokes Falbaum. “And he tells me his mom died in a back alley abortion, protecting him and his siblings before Roe was passed – because she knew she could not support another child. To honour her memory, he wanted to be first to sign the petition.”How will she feel if Michigan votes yes on 8 November, as the polls suggest?“It feels like a culmination of my life’s work,” says Falbaum, tearing up. “It just makes me feel safe.”TopicsMichiganAbortionUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More