US Politics

Ocasio-Cortez to Pence: ‘No one wants to hear your plan for their uterus’Congresswoman makes remark after former vice-president says there will be ‘pro-life majorities’ in House and Senate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had a simple message for Mike Pence on abortion, after the former vice-president predicted “pro-life majorities” in both houses of Congress after the midterm elections.“I’ve got news for you,” the Democratic New York congresswoman wrote. “Absolutely no one wants to hear what your plan is for their uterus.”The ‘election-denier trifecta’: alarm over Trumpists’ efforts to win key postsRead morePence was speaking in response to Joe Biden, after the president announced that if Democrats hold Congress in the midterm elections next month, he will seek to establish the right to abortion in law.The right was removed in June by the conservative-dominated supreme court, when it struck down Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that made abortion legal.Pence, once a conservative congressman and governor of Indiana, is maneuvering for a bid for the Republican presidential nomination.Asked this week if he would support his old boss, Donald Trump, should he mount a third White House campaign, Pence said: “Well, there might be somebody else I prefer more.”He added: “All my focus has been on the midterm elections and it’ll stay that way for the next 20 days. But after that, we’ll be thinking about the future, ours and the nation’s. And I’ll keep you posted, OK?”The tweet that stoked the ire of Ocasio-Cortez, a prominent House progressive, said: “I’ve got news for President Biden. Come January 22nd, we will have Pro-Life majorities in the House and Senate and we’ll be taking the cause of the right to Life to every state house in America!”According to most polling, Republicans are well placed to take the House and possibly the Senate.Boosted by results in special elections and ballot measures earlier this year, Democrats hope turnout among women angered by the supreme court decision on abortion can help them keep control of Congress and important state posts.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022Alexandria Ocasio-CortezMike PenceUS politicsAbortionDemocratsUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

LA city council members defy calls to resign after racist recording, setting up power struggleMagic Johnson joins in with citywide denunciations of De León and Cedillo, but council is powerless to expel them The Los Angeles city council appears to be headed for a long and bruising power struggle, as two councilmen resist widespread calls for their resignation amid a racism scandal and state investigation.‘We ain’t done dancing’: Los Angeles festival brings Black community togetherRead moreA week since the president of the city council, Nury Martinez, resigned over crude and racist remarks she made during an October 2021 meeting with other Latino leaders, two other councilmembers present at the meeting have refused to step down, despite Democratic leadership – up to Joe Biden – calling on them to do so.On Wednesday, Magic Johnson, the superstar athlete, philanthropist and one of the city’s most respected celebrities, added his voice to the calls for their resignation, tweeting: “Let the city heal and move forward! The people of Los Angeles voted you in the position, and now they are calling for you to resign.”Activists from Black Lives Matter Los Angeles pledged to hold a 24/7 protest outside one of the councilmember’s houses until he agrees to resign.We have a long history of Black & Brown #Solidarity…because smashing white-supremacy benefits us all. @kdeleon betrays that history and must #ResignNow. #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/cQJQe3kjFv— #BlackLivesMatter-LA (@BLMLA) October 16, 2022
Rise and shine. @blmla embarks on first full day of 24/7 encampment in front of LA Councilmember Kevin de Leon’s Eagle Rock home. LAPD is keeping a close watch. pic.twitter.com/QySJQBJnXo— Proud Member of The Blacks (@Jasmyne) October 16, 2022
But that councilmember, Kevin de León, a brash, longtime power player in California state politics, disclosed in media interviews on Wednesday that he would not step down but wanted to take a leave from council meetings to attempt to restore his reputation. The city council president, Paul Krekorian, called that unacceptable.The standoff is unfolding even as there seem to be few hard rules about personal conduct and consequences for public officials. The council already has stripped De León of much of his power in an effort to pressure him to resign, but it has no authority to expel members.De León also could face a recall election if he refuses to resign, a measure some progressives in Los Angeles have been advocating.The remaining councilmember who participated in the meeting, Gil Cedillo, is already scheduled to leave office in December, after being defeated by a young progressive challenger, Eunisses Hernandez, in a primary election earlier this year.The uproar began with the release nearly two weeks ago of a previously unknown recording of a 2021 private meeting involving De León, two other councilmembers and a powerful labor leader, all Latino Democrats, in which they schemed to protect their political clout in the redrawing of council districts during an hourlong conversation laced with bigoted comments, with particularly demeaning remarks about Black, Indigenous and gay politicians and local residents.The conversation focused on the relative lack of Latino political representation in a city where nearly half of the residents are Latino, but documented Los Angeles’ most powerful lawmakers talking in derogatory terms about the “Blacks” and about Indigenous people from Mexico, as well as comparing the Black son of one of their colleagues to a monkey.The blunt backroom talk has prompted conversations about racism and colorism among Latinos in the United States, while also highlighting the enduring American scandal of political gerrymandering, in which voting districts are drawn and redrawn to protect the political power of individual incumbents.Disclosure of the recording has been followed by days of public outrage and protests, including a march of hundreds of Oaxacan Angelenos demanding the resignation of the Latino leaders who disparaged Indigenous people.A sign of more trouble came from two Black developers working on a downtown project who said in a letter to the city council that they could no longer work with De León, whose district includes the project that would be anchored to two hotels.The developers, R Donahue Peebles and Victor MacFarlane, called for his resignation and wrote that De León had been dismissive of their proposal, meeting with them just once over a two-year period.Democratic consultant Steve Maviglio said it is possible for De León to survive, but he must make sincere apologies and win back his constituents’ trust. That would start with small private meetings with business leaders, or coffee with community groups; any larger event would attract protests.He pointed to former Virginia governor Ralph Northam, who survived calls for his resignation after a picture surfaced from his 1984 medical school yearbook showing a man in blackface standing next to someone in a Ku Klux Klan hood and robe. The Democrat initially acknowledged he was in the photo and apologized, then reversed course, saying he was not in it.One person unlikely to lend a sympathetic ear to De León will be the state’s most powerful Democrat, Gavin Newsom. The governor and the councilman, who was once a Democratic leader in the state senate, have had strained relations for years that worsened when De León embarked on a failed attempt to oust Senator Dianne Feinstein in 2018.TopicsLos AngelesRaceCaliforniaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Abortion bans create ‘insurmountable barriers’ for incarcerated women in USSupreme court’s overturning of Roe will make reproductive healthcare in prisons a lot worse than it already is, experts warn When the US supreme court decided to strip away constitutional abortion protections in June, it effectively made the situation for many pregnant incarcerated women who are seeking abortions a lot worse.Conditions for reproductive healthcare in many US prison facilities are already often abysmal. With many pregnant inmates regularly facing dire circumstances including being denied abortions or being forced to give birth while shackled, experts warn that the overturn of Roe v Wade will now result in even more severe consequences for an already marginalized community.From 1980 to 2020, the number of incarcerated women across the country increased by over 475%, according to the Sentencing Project. In 2020, Idaho led the nation in the highest female state imprisonment rate at 110 per 100,000 female residents, followed by Oklahoma, South Dakota, Arizona, Wyoming, Kentucky and Montana. As of two years ago, the imprisonment rate for Black women was 1.7 times the rate of the imprisonment for white women. Meanwhile, Latinx women were imprisoned at 1.3 times the rate of white women.The Prison Policy Initiative found that an average of 58,000 people are pregnant each year when they enter local jails or prisons. In many of the states that already have the highest female state imprisonment rates, they also now have strict abortion laws ban the procedure almost entirely.As a result, the overturn of Roe v Wade is expected to make the lives of pregnant incarcerated people who are seeking abortions increasingly difficult.“People experiencing incarceration and pregnancy in states where abortion has been severely restricted or outlawed altogether, will likely face new barriers as jails and prisons seek to hide behind the supreme court’s decision to avoid their constitutional obligation to provide healthcare (including abortion) to people in custody,” Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the Reproductive Freedom Project at the American Civil Liberties Union told the Guardian.“Even where correctional staff and officials do not deliberately block access to care, the reduced availability of services and need to travel even greater distances to access legal abortion, and the greater demand for services in states where abortion is still legal, will only exacerbate all the financial and logistical obstacles that already existed,” she added.A study led by Carolyn Sufrin, the director of the Advocacy and Research on Reproductive Wellness of Incarcerated People program at Johns Hopkins University, surveyed incarcerated people’s abortion access across 22 state prison systems and six county jail systems.The study, which collected policy data for 12 months in 2016 to 2017 and was eventually published in 2021, found that there were already a myriad of obstacles such as self-payment requirements that can prevent a pregnant inmate from obtaining the care. Out of the 19 states that then permitted abortions, two-thirds required the pregnant inmate to pay.Only 11 of the 816 pregnancies in state and federal prisons that ended during the study time period were abortions, or 1.3%. 33 out of 224 pregnancies that ended at study jails were abortions, with over half of those happening during the first trimester.“There were already few abortions in prison settings…so will [the overturn of Roe] impact abortion access for an incarcerated individual? Absolutely,” Sufrin told the Guardian.For a lot of incarcerated women across the country, many remain behind bars because they are unable to afford bail. As a result, self-payment requirements for those seeking abortions are often times very difficult to fulfill.“State prison systems or jails sometimes would force pregnant people to pay for the procedure, sometimes including even the cost of transport or the time to have prison guards with them, which is problematic because normally if an incarcerated person is going off site for any other medical procedure, they wouldn’t be charged for the cost of transport or the time for the guards,” Corene Kendrick, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, told the Guardian.“Trying to expect those people in jails to come up with the money for transport to an offsite abortion procedure when they can’t even come up with the money to make bail, to go home to their families, really creates an insurmountable barrier.”In 2017, Kei’Choura Cathey, a former inmate who discovered she was pregnant in August 2015 while awaiting trial, sued the Maury county sheriff in Tennessee, claiming that he denied her the right to an abortion because her pregnancy was not a threat to her health nor the result of rape or incest.Cathey’s only option at the time was to post bail so she could leave jail to receive the abortion. However, her bail was set at a staggering $1m. Eventually, her bond was lowered to $8,000. However, according to the lawsuit, by the time Cathey was able to post bond, she was already more than six months into her pregnancy, thus making her abortion illegal.For a lot of pregnant incarcerated women seeking abortions in a post-Roe reality, experts fear that they are likely going to face similar circumstances like Cathey.“Prisons or jails will argue…that’s an elective procedure so we are not going to cover it,” said Kendrick, which in turn will potentially force many incarcerated pregnant women who are unable to cover the procedure to carry their pregnancies to term.For a lot of pregnant inmates, birthing conditions in prison facilities are already dire. Numerous reports in recent years have emerged of inmates either being forced to deliver while shackled to their beds or having to deliver their babies on their own.While some states – and in effect, prison facilities – are seeing outright bans in abortions as a result of the supreme court’s ruling in June, others have not overhauled abortion protections just yet.In Wyoming, for example, abortion is currently legal but remains restricted as it is only allowed to be performed until fetal “viability”.In a statement to the Guardian, Wyoming’s department of corrections said that the supreme court ruling on Roe in June has not affected its policies on abortion related issues.“The WDOC has not had any change in policy or care for abortion related issues in the WDOC for inmates or offenders. The WDOC does on occasion have female inmates that are pregnant during incarnation and they are cared for at the Wyoming Medium Correctional Institute in Torrington, WY. We rely upon the expertise of expert medical advice in all decisions related to the health and wellness of our inmates.”Ultimately, according to Sufrin, “There’s tremendous variability in what healthcare service deliveries look like on the ground and systems are not really set up to provide the full scope of comprehensive pregnancy and postpartum care for people.”For pregnant incarcerated people who are sent off-site for abortions, another issue that has emerged since Roe’s overturn is the hesitancy or even outright refusal from external healthcare providers to perform the abortions.“We’ve already seen instances of local hospitals turning people away and not providing medically necessary care because of ambiguities in the law, [such as] there might still be a heartbeat, those sorts of things. Then the carceral facility is left to manage dangerous bleeding or an ectopic pregnancy and they’re just very much ill-equipped to do that and don’t want to and should not,” explained Sufrin.“Even in the best of circumstances, there’s still a lot of constraints and a lot of trauma that pregnant folks experience. So now after the Dobb’s decision, we anticipate… that we’re going to have more pregnant people in our country and fewer people with access abortion. And I believe that we will see that in incarcerated settings as well,” she said.TopicsUS prisonsWomenUS politicsAbortionUS supreme courtLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

Maggie Haberman on Trump: ‘He’s become a Charles Foster Kane character’ The author of a new book on the former president reflects on his tumultuous tenure, and getting inside his head“The word ‘Rosebud’ is maybe the most significant word in film, and what we all watch. The wealth, the sorrow, the unhappiness, the happiness just struck lots of different notes. Citizen Kane was really about accumulation and, at the end of the accumulation, you see what happens and it’s not necessarily all positive.”Confidence Man review: Maggie Haberman takes down TrumpRead moreThese words were spoken in 2008 by an unlikely film critic named Donald Trump. Perhaps he glimpsed himself as if in a mirror. Like Kane in Orson Welles’s masterpiece, Trump was a swaggering capitalist and media star who forayed into politics, was brought down by hubris, and now rattles around a gilded cage in Florida.“He’s become something of a Charles Foster Kane-like character down in Mar-a-Lago these days,” observes Maggie Haberman, a Pulitzer-winning reporter for the New York Times, political analyst for CNN and author of Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, which has a black-and-white photo of Trump on its cover.Her analogy raises the question: what is Trump’s Rosebud, the childhood sled that symbolised Kane’s lost innocence? “His father is Rosebud, and I don’t think it’s one particular moment,” Haberman replies. “There’s no single childhood memory that is the key. It’s a series of moments that interlock and they point back to his father.”Fred Trump was a property mogul who had been disappointed by his eldest son Fred Jr’s lack of commitment to the family business. Donald Trump, by contrast, impressed his father by cultivating a brash “killer” persona and became heir apparent. Decades later, in the first weeks of his presidency, Trump had one photo on the credenza behind him in the Oval Office: his father, still watching.Speaking by phone from her car in midtown Manhattan, Haberman reflects: “His father basically created this endless competition between Trump and his older brother Freddie ,and pitted them against each other. Donald Trump spent a lot of time seeking his father’s approval and that became a style of dealing with people, which was certainly better suited for a business than for a household.”“But it became one that Trump recreated in all aspects of his life. It became how he dealt with his own children. It became how he dealt with people who worked for him and then, in the White House, you read a number of stories about these battles that his aides would have. A lot of it was was predetermined by lessons from his father.”But if Trump is Kane, who is Haberman? Is a series of media interviews to promote the book, she has resisted making herself the story. When Trevor Noah of Comedy Central’s the Daily Show likened her relationship with Trump to that between Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, she demurred that the former president is “uniquely focused” on the New York Times “and I’m just the person who has covered him more often than not”.Even so, during Haberman’s three interviews with Trump for the book – two at Mar-a-Lago and one at Bedminster, New Jersey – he remarked to his staff: “I love being with her. She’s like my psychiatrist. I’ve never seen a psychiatrist, but if I did, I’m sure it would not be as good as this, right?”There are echoes of fictional mafia boss Tony Soprano and his psychiatrist Jennifer Melfi, but Haberman again sticks to humility: “I think he just said something that he didn’t really mean, and that was intended to flatter. It’s the kind of thing that he says about his Twitter feed or other interviews. He treats everybody like they’re his psychiatrist.”But is there anything that Haberman can see in person that the rest of us cannot on TV? “He uses his personality and he uses his physicality in ways that I’ve just never seen anybody do and so he can be very charming and and disarming when you meet him, particularly at first. But inevitably he shows displeasure or anger.”What is beyond dispute is that Haberman, who turns 49 later this month, was better prepared than almost any other reporter for the Trump presidency. She was born in New York to parents who met while working at the New York Post, a tabloid newspaper that he long courted, and lived most of her adult life in the borough where Trump learned the mechanics of political power.With printers’ ink in her veins, the workaholic Haberman started her own career at the New York Post, moved to the Politico website and then, in 2015, joined the New York Times, where reporting on Trump became her full-time job. She did not follow him to Washington yet, seldom without a phone to her ear, still “owned” the Trump beat from New York.Her book distinguishes itself from the many others in the Trump canon by delving into this shared history and telling his back story. To fully reckon with Trump, his presidency and political future, she writes, people need to know where she comes from. American carnage in embryo.She explains: “Everything about this presidency was foretold. The past is prologue with lots of people, but particularly with him. He ended up having this set of behaviors of his own that were augmented by the world he came from, the climate he came from in New York, the industry he came from and the industries he dealt with in terms of politics, of media.”This was the shady world of Roy Cohn, a mafia lawyer and political fixer best known for his involvement in Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist campaign of the 1950s. Cohn was a mentor and personal lawyer to Trump early in his business career and schooled him in the dark arts of attacking your accuser, playing the victim, never apologising and taking a transactional approach to human relations.Trump was perversely attracted to authoritarianism and violence even then. In 1990, engulfed in personal crises, he praised China for its deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square. His narcissistic fixation on the media was there too. Trump planted stories about himself in New York gossip columns and could be both thick skinned and thin skinned at the same time.Under the influence of his father and of Cohn, Trump’s racism was baked in early. In one anecdote, Haberman writes that, after his second marriage, he dated a model, Kara Young, who had a Black mother and white father. He asked an associate: “Do you think she looks Black?” Weeks after meeting Young’s parents, Trump told her that she got her beauty from her mother and her intelligence “from her dad, the white side”.Trump’s and attitudes towards race have barely shifted since the New York of the 1980s. Haberman comments: “His pop culture references tended to be from the 1980s and certainly his view of racial strife and crime was frozen in time in 1980s New York when the murder rate at various points hovered near near 2,000 [per year].”“New York’s racial politics, not entirely, but to some extent have evolved and certainly the crime rate has gone down. But Trump still describes this apocalyptic life that is clearly resonant with him but doesn’t necessarily reflect where things are. ”Haberman’s long familiarity with Trump meant she was less surprised than many by his political ambitions. She covered his appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2011, noting for Politico that “he was by far the best-received speaker”. He did not run then but took the plunge in 2015, trundling down an escalator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy.“The timing was right. He was bored with his company. He was much older and he was running out of opportunities but I don’t believe he expected to win. He was very surprised.”Did he actually want to win? “I asked somebody close to him in April 2015, does he actually want to be president or does he just want to win? And their response was, that’s a really good question, which I took as my answer.”Trump shook the political world by beating Democrat Hillary Clinton to become the first person elected to the White House with no previous political or military experience. Step back for a moment and it is still astounding, jaw-dropping. How on earth did it happen?Part of it, Haberman says, was Trump’s ability to capitalise on leftover energy from the Tea Party, a rightwing populist movement with roots in the racial backlash against Obama’s election. Part was Trump’s fame as host of The Apprentice – voters refused to hear facts that contradicted beliefs shaped by the reality TV show.And for a swath of the country that felt alienated from Washington, there was appeal in a political outsider telling them they were right to be mistrustful. She comments: “Our politics are broken. They’ve been broken for a while. I don’t think he created that but he fueled it and exacerbated it and benefited from it.”The 45th president lived down to her expectations. She was on the receiving end of both his insatiable desire for attention and his poison-pen responses to critical coverage. A month after taking office, Trump, while developing a symbiotic relationship with Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News channel, branded the New York Times and other outlets “the enemy of the American people”.Haberman comments: “He has endangered journalists with that language and that language has been used by authoritarians in other countries to legitimise anti-press crackdowns. I don’t think Donald Trump has any sense of what the role of the free press is in a democracy. None.”Was there anything, amid the four-year madness of all caps tweets, hirings and firings, insults and lies that shocked even her? Haberman picks the day that Trump stood on the White House podium floating the idea that coronavirus patients might inject themselves with bleach. “He was feeling competitive with the doctors because he gets competitive with everybody. That was a pretty striking moment.”As Trump mused on the utility of disinfectants as a miracle cure, the then coronavirus response coordinator, Deborah Birx, infamously sat silent. It was one incident among many that shone a light on the White House officials and aides who enabled Trump – or at least failed to make a stand until it was too late.But Haberman takes a more charitable view: “There were a lot of people there who really were trying to do the right thing. There were people who were worried about the country. There were people who realised that this was a guy who didn’t understand government and had no idea what he himself stood for.”Some White House alumni have been condemned for cashing in by writing memoirs. Haberman herself has been accused of holding back pearls of news for her book rather than publishing them in the Times immediately. Critics seized on its revelation that, following his defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 election, Trump told an aide: “I’m just not going to leave.” His state of denial culminated in a deadly insurrection by a mob of his supporters at the US Capitol on January 6.Political consultant Steve Schmidt tweeted: “Was it important information for the public to know Trump said he wasn’t leaving after losing an election? Yes. Was this information deliberately concealed for an economic reason that took higher precedence than the truth and the public right to know? YES.”Haberman flatly denies the charge, saying that she would have published the story if she could have confirmed it at the time but she only nailed it down long after Trump left office. When, during research for the book, she did land a scoop about Trump apparently trying to flush documents down a White House toilet, she alerted the Times and printed it right away.“Books take time. They’re a process of going back and interviewing people again and revisiting scenes that have happened. I turned to this project in earnest after February 2021 and the second impeachment trial. My goal was to get confirmed, reportable information in print as quick as possible and, if I had known these things in real time, and had them confirmed, I would have published them.”For Confidence Man she spoke to 250 people, some of whom were more willing to speak for a book than a here-today-gone-tomorrow news story. There are two questions she did not ask Trump but now wishes she had. Did he ever consider a White House taping system? (he is a fan of former president Richard Nixon) Did he ever worry for Vice President Mike Pence’s safety? (There were chants of “Hang Mike Pence!” on January 6).She may never get the chance. Haberman and Trump have not spoken since the book’s publication. Does she worry that its deeply reported 508-page narrative, a damning verdict for posterity, has severed the relationship? She says firmly: “It’s not a relationship. He’s someone I cover, and I will cover him whether he’s talking to me or not talking to me.”Or it may prove that he needs her more than she needs him. If Trump can survive an array of federal, state and congressional investigations to run for president again in 2024, Haberman would surely be the lead reporter. “I don’t know. Maybe. Right now I just want to get some sleep.”So it was that Haberman told Politico last month that her work is both her curse and her salvation – a comment that hinted at, if not her own Rosebud, a realisation that she is not yet untethered from the man she understands better than anyone. “I love work and I love what I do, but I also don’t have an off switch. When you’re covering someone who also doesn’t have an off switch, that can be a problem.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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Steve Bannon expected to appeal contempt of Congress convictionAppeal to contend ex-Trump strategist should’ve been allowed to argue he defied Capitol attack subpoena on advice of lawyers Donald Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon is expected to ask a federal appeals court to overturn his contempt of Congress conviction, contending that he should have been allowed at trial to argue he defied a subpoena from the House January 6 select committee on the advice of his lawyers.The appeal will seek the DC circuit court to quash the conviction for which he is set on Friday to face a potential six month prison sentence and $200,000 in fines as recommended by the justice department, according to sources familiar with the matter.Steve Bannon: justice department urges six-month prison term in contempt caseRead moreBannon’s appeal is expected to make the case that the legal precedent that prevented US district court judge Carl Nichols from allowing his lawyers to argue the definition of “willful” defiance used at trial, as well as the fact that he had relied on the advice of counsel, was inapplicable.The argument appears to capitalize on repeated acknowledgements by Nichols in pre-trial rulings that he considered the legal precedent to be outdated and might have otherwise permitted Bannon’s lawyers to say the former aide – because of bad legal advice – did not realize he acted unlawfully.“I think that the DC Circuit may very well have gotten this wrong,” Nichols said. “The problem is, I’m not writing on a clean slate here.”Bannon’s appeal is expected to echo points raised in his sentencing memo, which complained that the precedent set by the DC circuit in Licavoli v United States 1961 – that the justice department merely had to prove Bannon intentionally defied the select committee subpoena – was outdated.The definition of “willful” for contempt of Congress prosecutions has changed since the ruling in the Licavoli case, the memo noted, and the supreme court recently has said prosecutors have to show defendants knew their conduct was unlawful in order to prove they willfully violated a statute.That should have been the standard for Bannon’s trial, the memo argued, suggesting that would have paved the way for Bannon to make the case that he did not believe defying the subpoena was unlawful after his lawyers told him he was protected by executive privilege.Bannon could face an uphill struggle with his appeal. Even if the precedent was updated, legal experts said, Bannon would still have to defend against the justice department and the select committee’s argument that Trump never actually asserted privilege for his former strategist.And even if Bannon could produce correspondence to show Trump had asserted executive privilege – to date, there has only been an email from his lawyer appearing to make that assumption – he would have still needed to attend the deposition and assert it question by question, the experts said.A spokesman for Bannon declined to comment.Bannon was charged with two counts of contempt of Congress after his refusal to comply at all with the select committee’s subpoena demanding documents and testimony last year triggered the House of Representatives to refer him to the justice department for prosecution.The select committee had sought Bannon’s cooperation after it identified him early on in the investigation as a key player in the run-up to the Capitol attack, who appeared to have advance knowledge of Trump’s efforts to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win on January 6.Among other moments of interest, the Guardian has previously reported, Bannon received a call from Trump the night before the Capitol attack while he was at a Trump “war room” at the Willard hotel and was told of then vice president Mike Pence’s resistance to decertifying Biden’s win.The close contacts with Trump in the days and hours leading up to the Capitol attack meant Bannon was among the first targets of the investigation, and his refusal to comply with the subpoena galvanised the panel’s resolve to make an example of him with a contempt referral.During the five-day trial in July, Bannon’s legal team ultimately declined to present any evidence in defense after Nichols excluded the “advice of counsel” argument, and the justice department told the jury in closing arguments they should find the case straightforward.“The defense wants to make this hard, difficult and confusing,” assistant US attorney Amanda Vaughn said in federal court in Washington. “This is not difficult. This is not hard. There were only two witnesses because it’s as simple as it seems.”That meant the only arguments left available to Bannon were either that he was somehow confused about the deadlines indicated on the subpoena, or that he did not realize the deadlines were concrete and failing to comply with those dates would mean he was in default.TopicsSteve BannonDonald TrumpJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Iranian troops are “directly engaged on the ground” in Crimea supporting Russian drone strikes against Ukrainian forces, the White House said this afternoon.“The information we have is that the Iranians have put trainers and tech support in Crimea, but it’s the Russians who are doing the piloting,” said John Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council.According to Kirby, a “relatively small number” of Iran’s troops are helping Russian forces launch the Iranian-made drones. The US said over the summer that Iran was selling its drones to Russia, but Tehran has denied the charge. That’s all from the US politics live blog today. Here’s how the day unfolded in Washington and across the pond:
The White House said Iranian troops are assisting Russia’s drone operations against Ukraine. According to John Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, a “relatively small number” of Iran’s troops are helping Russian forces launch the Iranian-made drones. The US said over the summer that Iran was selling its drones to Russia, but Tehran has denied the charge.
Republican leaders are clashing over sending additional military aid to Ukraine. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who could become speaker after the midterm elections next month, has expressed skepticism about approving more funding to assist Ukraine in its fight against Russia. But Mike Pence, former vice-president to Donald Trump, said yesterday, “There can be no room in the conservative movement for apologists to Putin.”
Lawmakers of both parties are reportedly considering passing another Ukraine aid package during the lame-duck session. According to NBC News, the lawmakers are discussing passing a very substantial funding bill – potentially in the neighborhood of $50bn – to keep Ukraine well supplied even if Republicans refuse to approve more aid after January.
British Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned after just 45 days in office. Becoming the shortest-serving prime minister in UK history, Truss was forced to step down after proposing (and then scrapping) a widely unpopular budget plan and losing the confidence of many fellow Tories.
Joe Biden thanked Truss for her service and her partnership in helping to hold Russia accountable for its war against Ukraine. “We will continue our close cooperation with the UK government as we work together to meet the global challenges our nations face,” Biden said in a statement.
Biden traveled to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to tout the enactment of the bipartisan infrastructure law. The president spoke at the site of the Fern Hollow Bridge, which collapsed into a ravine earlier this year. A new section of the bridge is now being constructed, and Biden credited infrastructure law with helping to make the project possible. “For too long, we talked about building the best economy in the world and the best infrastructure in the world,” Biden said. “We’re finally getting to it.”
The US politics blog will return tomorrow with more updates from Washington and the campaign trail, so make sure to tune back in.Lawmakers of both parties are considering trying to pass another Ukraine aid package during the lame-duck session, according to a new report from NBC News.The report comes days after House minority leader Kevin McCarthy suggested he would block additional military aid to Ukraine if Republicans regain control of the lower chamber in the midterm elections next month, as they are favored to do.NBC reports:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}With that threat to Ukraine aid looming, the bipartisan idea under consideration would use a government funding bill during the lame-duck session after the midterms to secure a much higher level of military and other assistance than prior aid packages for Ukraine, according to [one] lawmaker and [congressional] aides.
Congress last month approved $12 billion in military and economic aid to Ukraine, but the package being contemplated would be dramatically larger, the sources said.
The amount would be enough ‘to make sure [Ukraine] can get through the year,’ a Republican senator with knowledge of the matter told NBC News. ‘It’ll make the $12 billion look like pocket change.’
The new aid package, which most likely would be part of an omnibus spending bill, could be within the range of roughly $50 billion, congressional aides and a source close to the Ukraine government said.Some Republicans have signaled they would be open to approving additional funds for Ukraine, and Mike Pence, the former vice-president to Donald Trump, called on his party to stand up against Russia in a speech yesterday.“As Russia continues its unconscionable war of aggression to Ukraine, I believe that conservatives must make it clear that Putin must stop and Putin will pay,” Pence said. “There can be no room in the conservative movement for apologists to Putin.”Brigadier General Pat Ryder, a spokesperson for the defense department, said the drones that Iran is allegedly providing to Russia are being deployed as “psychological weapons used to create fear” in Ukraine.Ryder emphasized that Ukrainian forces are still notching some important victories against Russian troops, which “continue to lose territory or at best hold ground” in the war.The Pentagon spokesperson reiterated that Russia appears to be reaching out to countries like Iran and North Korea as its own munitions stockpile gets depleted because of the war in Ukraine.Brigadier General Pat Ryder, a spokesperson for the defense department, was asked what role Iranian troops are playing in Crimea as they assist Russia’s drone operations against Ukraine.“My understanding is, it’s the Russians who are flying the drones, and yes, [Iranians] are assisting the Russians in those operations,” Ryder said.Ryder declined to comment on press reports that US intelligence officials have assessed photos of drone strike sites in Ukraine to determine that Russia has been using Iranian-produced weapons in their attacks. The US said over the summer that Iran was providing Russia with drones, but Tehran has denied that allegation.The Pentagon echoed the White House’s assessment that Iranian troops have been on the ground in Crimea to assist Russia’s drone operations against Ukraine.“We continue to see Iran be complicit in terms of exporting terror, not only in the Middle East region, but now also to Ukraine. And so I think that speaks for itself,” Brigadier General Pat Ryder, a spokesperson for the defense department.When asked about potential sanctions against Iran for working with Russia, Ryder deferred those questions to the state department, but he reiterated America’s commitment to providing all available support to Ukrainians as they seek to defend their country.Iranian troops are “directly engaged on the ground” in Crimea supporting Russian drone strikes against Ukrainian forces, the White House said this afternoon.“The information we have is that the Iranians have put trainers and tech support in Crimea, but it’s the Russians who are doing the piloting,” said John Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council.According to Kirby, a “relatively small number” of Iran’s troops are helping Russian forces launch the Iranian-made drones. The US said over the summer that Iran was selling its drones to Russia, but Tehran has denied the charge. Joe Biden closed his infrastructure remarks in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his standard message of optimism about the future of the nation.“For most of the last century, we led the world by a significant margin because we invested in our people. We invested in ourselves, we invested in our land. But along the way, we stopped doing that – but not anymore. We’re back on track,” Biden said.“We’re proving our best days are ahead of us, not behind us. We just have to keep going, and we know we can. I have never been more optimistic about America’s future.”With that, Biden wrapped up his speech. He will soon start his trip to Philadelphia, where he will participate in a fundraiser with Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman.Joe Biden expressed pride that the bipartisan infrastructure bill he signed into law last year is helping to improve the roads and bridges of Pennsylvania, where the president was born in 1942.Biden said his staff informed him that he has visited Pittsburgh 19 times since he launched his presidential campaign there in 2019. After securing the Democratic nomination in 2020, Biden’s first campaign stop was in Pittsburgh.“Let me tell you, I’m a proud Delawarean, but Pennsylvania is my native state. It’s in my heart,” Biden said. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me to be part of rebuilding this beautiful state.”Joe Biden is now delivering remarks on strengthening America’s infrastructure in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as the president seeks to tout Democrats’ legislative accomplishments ahead of the midterm elections next month.The president chose to speak at the site of the Fern Hollow Bridge, which collapsed into a ravine earlier this year. Democrats have cited the bridge collapse, which thankfully resulted in no deaths, as an alarming example of the country’s crumbling infrastructure.A new section of the bridge is now being constructed, and Biden credited the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law last year with helping to make the project possible.“For too long, we talked about building the best economy in the world and the best infrastructure in the world,” Biden said. “We’re finally getting to it.”A portion of the bridge is expected to be completed by December, and Biden joked in his speech, “I’m coming back to walk over this sucker.”Congressional Republicans introduced a measure Tuesday that would prohibit federal money from being used to teach children under 10 about LGBTQ issues.The bill would prohibit the use of federal funds to teach children about “sexually-oriented material” as well as “any topic involving gender identity, gender dysphoria, transgenderism, sexual orientation, or related subjects.” The effects of such a law, if enacted, would be far-reaching since a range of institutions – schools, libraries, among them – receive public money.The bill also gives parents the ability to sue in federal court if their child is exposed to the barred material that is funded “in whole or in part” by federal funds.The bill was introduced by Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, and 32 other GOP members of Congress.Read the Guardian’s full report:Republicans aim to pass national ‘don’t say gay’ law Read moreHere’s where the day stands so far:
Republican leaders are clashing over sending additional military aid to Ukraine. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who could become speaker after the midterm elections next month, has expressed skepticism about approving more funding to assist Ukraine in its fight against Russia. But Mike Pence, former vice-president to Donald Trump, said yesterday, “There can be no room in the conservative movement for apologists to Putin.”
British Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned after just 45 days in office. Becoming the shortest-serving prime minister in UK history, Truss was forced to step down after proposing (and then scrapping) a widely unpopular budget plan and losing the confidence of many fellow Tories.
Joe Biden thanked Truss for her service and her partnership in helping to hold Russia accountable for its war against Ukraine. “We will continue our close cooperation with the UK government as we work together to meet the global challenges our nations face,” Biden said in a statement.
The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.More Americans are getting the latest Covid-19 booster shot, but the White House warns that vaccination rates are still too low headed into the winter months when cases could surge again.Speaking to reporters on Air Force One moments ago, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said 4.5 million Americans received booster shots in the past week.A White House official told CNN that about 20 million Americans in total have now gotten their booster shots, but that number represents less than 10% of the country’s eligible population.“The work we’re doing to reach Americans through on the ground work with trusted organizations in communities across the country and paid media is helping drive the urgency for all Americans to get the protection they need ahead of the winter,” White House Covid-19 coordinator, Dr Ashish Jha, said in a statement to CNN.“But to be very clear: it’s going to take everyone talking to their family and friends to ensure the country is as protected as possible. Our message is simple: do not wait to get your updated vaccine.” More

Early voters in Arizona midterms report harassment by poll watchersComplaints detail ballot drop box monitors filming, following and calling voters ‘mules’ in reference to conspiracy film A voter in Maricopa county, Arizona, claims a group of people watching a ballot drop box photographed and followed the voter and their wife after they deposited their ballots at the box, accusing them of being “mules”.Trump’s ‘big lie’ hits cinemas: the film claiming to investigate voter fraudRead moreThe voter filed a complaint with the Arizona secretary of state, who forwarded it to the US Department of Justice and the Arizona attorney general’s office for investigation, according to Sophia Solis, a spokesperson with the secretary of state’s office.The incident allegedly occurred at a Mesa, Arizona, outdoor drop box on the evening of 17 October. Early voting, both in person and via mailed ballots, began on 12 October ahead of the midterm elections.“There’s a group of people hanging out near the ballot drop box filming and photographing my wife and I as we approached the drop box and accusing us of being a mule. They took a photographs [sic] of our license plate and of us and then followed us out the parking lot in one of their cars continuing to film,” the voter wrote in the complaint.In Arizona, voters can only drop off ballots for themselves, people in their households or families, or people they’re providing care for. Other states don’t ban so-called ballot harvesting. The practice became illegal in Arizona in 2016.The incident comes as people in Maricopa and Yavapai counties have started to monitor drop boxes, spurred by the movie 2000 Mules, which makes unsubstantiated claims that “mules” are stuffing ballot boxes with votes. In other states, similar efforts to monitor drop boxes are under way, organized by people who remain convinced the 2020 presidential election was stolen.The Maricopa drop boxes are already under video surveillance by the county and broadcast on a live feed on the county’s website, and the Yavapai drop boxes have cameras mounted on them.Election officials and voter advocacy groups have warned that the practice could lead to voter intimidation. At a press conference in Phoenix on Wednesday, Maricopa county supervisor Bill Gates said people outside the Maricopa county tabulation and election center were approaching and photographing election workers as they went into the site to work.“They’re harassing people. They’re not helping further the interests of democracy. If these people really wanna be involved in the process, learn more about it, come be a poll worker or a poll observer,” Gates said.On Wednesday, a few people with cameras gathered outside a fence around the tabulation center’s parking lot and identified themselves to reporters as part of a group called Clean Elections USA. On its website, the group says it’s looking for “true Patriots to take a stand and watch the drop boxes” by gathering video and witnessing any potential “ballot tampering”.In Yavapai county, groups that planned to organize drop box watches received legal warnings that they could be intimidating voters, halting their plans for coordinated watches, but some people are still watching the boxes from their cars, one of the groups, Lions of Liberty, told local TV station AZFamily.Yavapai county sheriff David Rhodes issued a statement about drop box watching and voter intimidation this week, saying that the number of ballots a person drops off does not indicate a crime or suspicion of a crime. Arizona’s ballot collection law doesn’t specify how many ballots a person can drop off, just the people they can carry ballots for.“It is difficult to know each voter’s circumstance so your behavior towards others attempting to cast ballots must not interfere with that person’s right to vote. Should your actions construe harassment or intimidation you may be breaking Arizona’s voter intimidation laws,” Rhodes wrote.Election officials ask voters to report instances of harassment and intimidation to their local election offices or other authorities, so that those claims can be investigated.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022The fight for democracyArizonaUS politicsUS voting rightsPostal votingnewsReuse this content More