US Politics

Paul LePage: is Maine ready to welcome back the ‘Trump before Trump’? The Republican ex-governor was known for his offensive, belligerent attitude – but this time, he says he’s reformedIn the late summer of 2016, Drew Gattine received a surprising voicemail. The sender was Paul LePage, then the governor of Maine, and he called Gattine “a little son-of-a-bitch socialist cocksucker”.Amid the inevitable media frenzy that followed, LePage lamented not having the opportunity to engage Gattine, a Democrat in the Maine house of representatives, in a duel. Rather than follow in the footsteps of Alexander Hamilton, who pointed his gun in the air when he dueled Aaron Burr in 1804, LePage told reporters, “I would point it right between his eyes, because he is a snot-nosed little runt.”.The incident made national headlines and shocked many Americans, not least Gattine’s aunt, who called him from Arizona after learning of the threat on National Public Radio. “It was an interesting five or six days of my life,” Gattine says now.But for Gattine and other Mainers, LePage’s behavior was somewhat typical by that point. Over his eight years in office, LePage cultivated a reputation for offensive comments and for adversarial relationships with reporters, Democrats and even fellow Republicans.America’s love for cars continues – will gas prices decide the midterms?Read moreNow, after briefly leaving Maine for Florida, LePage has come home with a mission: to return to the governor’s mansion. Contradicting his previous claims that he was “done with politics” after his two terms in office – “I’m going to retire and go to Florida,” LePage proclaimed in late 2018, “I’ve done my eight years. It’s time for somebody else” – LePage is back, making a pitch for another term as he attacks Democratic governor Janet Mills’ economic record.“I’m running again, because Maine is in serious, serious trouble,” LePage said at a forum in Waterville on Tuesday. “Maine’s economy is going backwards, and it’s not growing. We need to get somebody there that can grow it. I did it once. I will do it again.”Mainers may have some understandable misgivings about revisiting the LePage era. When the NAACP criticized LePage forskipping Martin Luther King Day events in 2011, the then-governor responded by noting that his adopted son is Black. “Tell them to kiss my butt,” LePage said. “If they want to play the race card, come to dinner; my son will talk to them.”The comment sparked accusations of racism, which dogged LePage during his tenure. In 2016, LePage complained that Maine was struggling with the opioid epidemic because drug dealers “with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty” were coming into Maine from other states and would often “impregnate a young white girl before they leave”. Months later, LePage told reporters that it was important to identify the “enemy” in the opioid epidemic, saying: “The enemy right now, the overwhelming majority of people coming in, are people of color or people of Hispanic origin.”It was Gattine’s criticism of LePage’s race-related comments about the opioid epidemic that culminated in the governor’s threat of a duel.“The irony is, the comments that I had made that got him so angry, I was trying to be very measured,” said Gattine, who now serves as chair of the Maine Democratic party. “I think he has such a reputation for saying these off-the-wall things that people just used to sit around waiting for him to say them.”That reputation invited many comparisons between LePage and another Republican known for causing controversy: Donald Trump. Both men built political personas off their sensational rhetoric, and some of LePage’s stunts as governor even seemed to foreshadow Trump’s later acts as president. In 2018 for example, LePage registered his discontent with Democrat Jared Golden’s victory in a Maine congressional race by writing on the certification form “stolen election,” previewing Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 race.The two politicians now find themselves in similar situations again – with LePage seeking to return to office just as Trump contemplates another presidential bid in 2024. But despite LePage’s past praise of the former president – he once described himself as “Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular” – he has struck a notably different tone in recent months.LePage now rarely invokes Trump’s name while campaigning, and he has abandoned his past support for the former president’s lies about the 2020 election. “I believe that President Biden won the election,” LePage said at a debate earlier this month. When asked last month whether Trump should run again, he dodged the question: “I’m running for governor of the state of Maine, all right? And that’s it.”LePage’s efforts to distance himself from Trump fit into his campaign’s broader goal of presenting a toned-down version of the pugnacious leader that Mainers came to know over his eight years in office. “What I’m saying is, life is a journey,” LePage told the Atlantic. “And along the way you learn and you get better, and hope that every day, the rest of my life, I’m a better man.”Democrats scoff at the idea of a reformed LePage, and they say his behavior on the campaign trail has provided ample evidence that the former governor is the same as he ever was. They specifically point to an incident in August when LePage threatened to “deck” a Maine Democratic party staffer paid to track his events.“Initially [in] this campaign, he was fairly even in his temperament … But really, I think since sometime in August, that’s been less effective,” said Amy Fried, chair of the University of Maine’s political science department. She said of LePage’s threat against the tracker, “It really gave Democrats an opening to say, this is not a new LePage. This is the old LePage.”Mills has hammered that theme in her messaging as well, using her campaign ads and speeches to resurrect LePage’s past comments and conduct while in office. Speaking at a fundraising event in Portland on Thursday, Mills reminded supporters that LePage once expressed openness to overturning Roe v Wade, the landmark supreme court case that established federal protections for abortion access. The supreme court did indeed reverse Roe in June, and LePage has since sent mixed messages about his stance on abortion policy.Asked at the debate how he would respond if the state legislature attempted to limit abortion access to the first 15 weeks of pregnancy, LePage pleaded ignorance. “I don’t know what you mean by 15 weeks or 28 weeks,” LePage said. “I don’t know. I mean, I’m not sure I understand the question.”Mills accused LePage of attempting to hide his true views from Maine voters, repeatedly telling the Portland crowd: “We won’t go back.”In an interview after her speech, Mills expressed doubt that LePage’s efforts to present a new side of himself would prove successful.“People know better. People knew him for eight years. They knew how rudely he treated legislators of his own party. They know how he treated the Maine people,” Mills said. “They know Paul LePage, and hopefully they don’t forget the true Paul LePage.”Like many other Republican candidates nationwide, LePage seems to be hoping that record-high inflation and Joe Biden’s lackluster approval rating will be enough to sweep him back into office. He has focused his campaign events on kitchen-table issues such as rising oil prices and the struggles of Maine’s lobster industry, while keeping a relatively low profile when it comes to press access. (Multiple calls and emails to LePage’s campaign office and one of his senior advisers went unanswered.) Directly linking Mills to Biden, LePage’s allies insist his experience as governor will translate into an improved economy for the state.“Janet Mills and Maine Democrats only have soaring prices and a track record of failures to offer voters,” said Andrew Mahaleris, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee. “Paul LePage is the only candidate who will move Maine forward, protect our iconic lobstering industry from far-left activists, put an end to the Biden-Mills heating oil crisis that is crushing Mainers, and get our economy working again.”Mills rejected LePage’s characterization of her economic policies, noting that one study ranked Maine’s pandemic-era economy to be the 11th strongest in the nation. The sitting governor acknowledged the pain caused by rising prices, but rejected the idea that LePage would better address the global issue of inflation. Mills cited her approval of $850 relief checks to Maine families to help mitigate the effects of inflation, and said she has received letters from constituents thanking her for the checks, which allowed them to fill their gas tanks or pay for prescription drugs.“I’m not saying everything’s rosy. I’m not foolish,” Mills said. “At the same time, we, in a bipartisan budget, enacted one of the most generous, one of the most effective inflation relief programs in the country.”Mills’ efforts to work across the aisle could pay dividends at the ballot box, Fried said. As more states have embraced one-party rule, Maine has become an outlier in electing both Republican and Democratic candidates at the statewide level. In 2020, Biden defeated Trump by nine points, even as Republican senator Susan Collins won re-election with a similar margin.“Maine has tended to like the idea of people working together, and that was part of Susan Collins’s pitch all these years,” Fried said. “She definitely has more credibility on that, on being bipartisan, than LePage does.”LePage’s adversarial history could be contributing to his poor performance in recent polls, some of which show Mills with a double-digit lead in the race. Fried expressed skepticism of those results, but she acknowledged that LePage may be struggling with an issue that also plagued the man he once endorsed for president. Like Trump, LePage has a unique ability to motivate his biggest critics to turn out at the polls.“It’s hard for me to totally believe these polls that have a really large Mills lead. It’s likely it’s going to be closer,” Fried said. “Ultimately, in some ways, LePage is like a Trump figure in that people will come out on the left to prevent the least-liked candidate from winning.”TopicsMaineUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022newsReuse this content More

Divided midterms: parties play up different issues as US elections loomDemocrats and Republicans are largely talking past each other as they campaign, with little to no overlap on what they consider major issues Ron Johnson’s priorities were clear. “We have a huge problem with skyrocketing crime,” insisted the US senator for Wisconsin, accusing his debate opponent, Mandela Barnes, of pushing to reduce cash bail, release violent criminals and slash police funding.Minutes later it was Barnes’s turn to go on the offensive. Johnson, the lieutenant governor said, had described the end of the constitutional right to abortion as a “victory” and shown himself to be “callous” and “out of touch”. Barnes promised to codify that right into law if elected.US midterms 2022: the key racesRead moreA casual observer could have been forgiven for thinking the two candidates were fighting two different elections. For in split-screen America, Democrats and Republicans are largely talking past each other as they campaign for midterms that will decide control of Congress on 8 November.Each party is playing to its perceived strengths. A recent poll by the political research firm Public Opinion Strategies for NBC News found that 90% of voters would prefer Republican control of Congress for the issue of immigration and the border, 65% favour Republicans on crime and 60% want Republicans to handle jobs and the economy.The same survey showed that 86% of voters would prefer Democratic control of Congress to address climate change, 74% favor Democrats on guns, 71% prefer Democrats on abortion and 67% choose Democrats to cope with threats to democracy. The divide is unusually stark.“In past campaigns, the top one or two issues in the election were closely contested and divided between the two political parties,” said Bill McInturff, a partner of Public Opinion Strategies. “This election is different. Each party holds a wide marginal advantage on a distinct set of issues.”McInturff added: “America is more polarised than at any point in the last 40-plus years. Partisans have retreated to their own corners, with limited engagement between partisans, and very little to no overlap of agreement on any major issue.”Perhaps the most vivid illustration of America’s divide is abortion. In June the supreme court’s rightwing majority overturned the landmark Roe v Wade ruling that had enshrined it as a constitutional right for nearly half a century. The political consequences could be profound.The court’s decision prompted a surge among women registering to vote in some states. In conservative Kansas, people overwhelmingly voted to continue to protect abortion in the state constitution.The upshot is a Democratic campaign intensely focused on mobilising women and young people around reproductive rights. Citing data from Bully Pulpit Interactive, the Axios website reported that Democrats have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Facebook ads about abortion over the past three months.They were handed more ammunition when Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator for South Carolina, proposed a national abortion ban at 15 weeks, and when Herschel Walker, who supports an absolute national ban and is running for a Senate seat in Georgia, was reported to have encouraged and paid for an abortion in 2009 for a woman with whom he later fathered a child.Just as Democrats are eager to talk about abortion rights, Republicans – who spent decades promoting it as a hot button topic – are now equally eager to avoid the topic. Candidates are waffling around it in debates and interviews, deleting hardline positions from their campaign websites and seeking to change the subject whenever they can.But Democrats can take nothing for granted. Writing in the Guardian this week, Bernie Sanders, a senator for Vermont, said he was “alarmed” to hear that Democratic candidates are being advised that their closing arguments should focus only on the right to choose. “In my view, while the abortion issue must remain on the front burner, it would be political malpractice for Democrats to ignore the state of the economy and allow Republican lies and distortions to go unanswered,” Sanders wrote.James Carville, a veteran Democratic strategist, also struck a note of caution, telling the Associated Press: “A lot of these consultants think if all we do is run abortion spots that will win for us. I don’t think so. It’s a good issue. But if you just sit there and they’re pummeling you on crime and pummeling you on the cost of living, you’ve got to be more aggressive than just yelling abortion every other word.”Democrats have other cards to play: the climate crisis, gun safety and threats to democracy. While the last of these may be complex and abstract to some voters, former president Donald Trump’s continued scandals and campaign rallies are helping to keep it front and centre.House Republicans, meanwhile, made their priorities clear with last month’s launch of a “Commitment to America” policy agenda, emphasising the economy, crime, freedom of choice and government accountability. They claim that Democratic rule has produced 40-year high inflation, 12 cities with record murder rates, a 60% increase in petrol prices, 3.5m illegal border crossings under Joe Biden and record-high drug overdoses.Some of the attacks could be touching a nerve. Only 36% of Americans say they approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, according to a poll by the Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research, while 63% disapprove. Although the president has blamed rising energy and food prices on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, critics argue that his $1.9tn coronavirus relief package last year was excessive.In a mirror of Republicans’s dissembling around abortion, Democrats are being forced on the defensive despite low unemployment. Biden told CNN this week: “I don’t think there will be a recession. If it is, it’ll be a very slight recession. That is, we’ll move down slightly.”With Democrats similarly reluctant to discuss border security, Republicans believe that they hold the winning hand. Ed Rogers, a political consultant who worked in the Ronald Reagan and George H W Bush administrations, said: “Both parties are talking about what they can talk about. Republicans have the big four: inflation/economy; crime/lawlessness; public education, underreported in the US; the border/immigration.“The Democrats have abortion and name-calling – you’re a fascist, you’re a Nazi, you’re an extremist. That’s all they have. I can’t believe how the Democrats have abandoned the big four. They just don’t talk about them. They’re in a swirl of denial, of obfuscation, of defeat.“They just abandoned the ground. They’re not looking at the polling and selfishly saying, ‘Hey, gang, look at what people care about. We should have a well-crafted, affirmative message about these things.’ They didn’t have that meeting this cycle for some reason. It’s inexplicable to me.”For voters, it can often seem like two campaigns running in parallel with little overlap. Instead of coming at the same issue from different sides, now the issues themselves are different. One team is playing baseball, the other cricket. Longtime political observers say it used not to be this way.John Zogby, an author and pollster, said: “Usually there’s one set of issues. Pro, con, yay, nay. Not always but generally the economy. In the mid-90s crime was a big issue and there was no changing the subject. ‘Here’s our approach, here’s their approach.’ There was a common set of issues with different approaches. This is an election about different realities.”He added: “We talked politics even when I was a little kid and there were always disagreements but what makes this so unique is, as [former White House counselor] Kellyanne Conway pointed out, there’s ‘alternative facts’ that are involved.”The parties’ supporters do agree on one issue: last month a Quinnipiac University poll found that 69% of Democrats and 69% of Republicans say that democracy is “in danger of collapse”. But they have fundamentally divergent explanations: Democrats blame Trump and “ultra-Maga Republicans”, Republicans condemn Biden and socialism.Biden ran for election as a moderate promising to heal divisions and he still peppers his speeches with an emphasis on the “United States of America”. But the past two years have seen continued acrimony and even talk of civil war as Trump continues to dominate an extremist Republican party.US midterms 2022: the key candidates who threaten democracyRead moreNot everyone believes that the trend is irreversible, however. The Common Ground Committee, a non-partisan organisation, has launched a “score card” to assess the degree to which elected public officials and candidates for office seek points of agreement. Bruce Bond, co-founder and chief executive of the committee, argues that bipartisanship can actually be a selling point in the midterms.He said via Zoom: “Because politics have become national and if I’m a Republican I’m going talk about inflation, and if I’m a Democrat I’m going to talk about the Dobbs decision [by the supreme court on abortion], there’s now a little bit more interest in saying, ‘I have this strong position on this issue and I agree with my base but I also can work with people from the other side’.”Bond pointed to the example of Tim Ryan, a Democratic candidate for the Senate in Ohio, who has said he wants to represent “the exhausted majority” and work across the aisle. “What we’re seeing is that the candidates recognise that people are tired of the political divide. If you’re going to talk about the issues that you know your guys care about, that’s not going to be enough.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022The ObserverUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsfeaturesReuse this content More

Interview‘I decided to share my voice’: Estela Juarez on her mother, who Trump deported, and her new bookRichard Luscombe Just nine when zero-tolerance policy saw her mother sent to Mexico, now a teen, the Floridian has written a book for childrenFew stories exposed the cruelty of Donald Trump’s zero tolerance immigration policies more than that of Estela Juarez. Just nine, she saw her mother, Alejandra, the wife of a decorated US marine, deported to Mexico, leaving her and her sister Pamela, then 16, to grow up in Florida on their own.‘It’s heartbreaking’: military family shattered as wife of decorated US marine deported to MexicoRead moreNow a teenager, Estela has written a book about her experiences, Until Someone Listens, which also chronicles her years-long effort to reunify her family.From missed birthdays and holidays, the smell of Alejandra’s flautas no longer wafting from their kitchen, to Pamela’s high school graduation ceremony without her mother by her side, the story lays bare the pain of forced separation, even as the family never gives up hope of being whole again.The book is not Estela’s first turn in the spotlight. Her fight included a heartbreaking video played at the 2020 Democratic convention. As images of migrant children in cages filled the screen, she read a letter telling Trump: “You tore our world apart.”Now, with a colorful illustrated book aimed at children, albeit with a powerful plea for immigration reform directed at adults in positions of power, she is bringing her story to a new generation, with the message it is never too early to stand up for what’s right.“I know that if I decided to never share my voice then my mother wouldn’t be here right now next to me, and she wouldn’t be in the US,” Estela said on a Zoom call from her home in central Florida.“And I think that’s very important for other people to share their voice and I hope that they can get inspired by my story, and know that they’re not alone, because I know it’s hard to speak out, especially at such a young age.”Alejandra was able to return to Florida in May 2021 after almost three years in exile in Yucatan, as one of the early beneficiaries of an executive order signed by Joe Biden in his first days in office.The action reversed the Trump policy of deporting undocumented residents without impunity even if, as in Alejandra’s case, they’d lived in the US for decades, paid taxes, were married to US citizens, had US citizen children and stayed out of legal trouble.Biden’s order also directed the Department of Homeland Security to form an interagency taskforce to identify and reunify families separated under Trump. An interim report in July revealed that 2,634 children have been reunified with parents, with more than 1,000 cases pending.“We’re spending as much time as we have together and we try not to think about the fact that in a year or so my mom could be deported again,” Estela told me, referring to the temporary nature of her mother’s immigration “parole”, which will be reviewed in 2023.“Knowing that my story is not finished yet has inspired me to continue to write another book that’s more for teenagers and adults, and to give them a chance to be inspired.“I love writing, it helps me get my emotions out. When it comes to children’s books it has to be brief, and my story is very complicated, so I have to make it in a way where other children would understand.“My mother was never supposed to come back from Mexico. She was told she would be there for life. And knowing that after almost three years of being there she was able to come back shows me basically that anything is possible, so I have a lot of hope for the future.”Estela has grown since the Guardian first met her, Pamela and Alejandra in a playground in Haines City, Florida, in late summer 2018, about a week before their mother was deported.But even then, having only just turned nine, an advanced awareness of her family’s plight and that of others sat comfortably alongside her joyous, playful nature. She spoke eloquently of immigration reform and working with a Florida congressman, Darren Soto, on a bill to protect military families if any member was undocumented.Now 13, Estela is in her final year in middle school. She is studying the naturalization process in civics lessons she says are helping to inspire her career path.“I hope to become an immigration lawyer,” she said. “I know that right now I’m a minor, and with my writing I’m doing all I can to help immigrants. In the future I want to continue to help them.“Seeing how the broken immigration laws hurt my family, and others, seeing how it changed them forever, really gave me the courage to continue to speak out and spend my time helping them.”As Estela says in the book: “My words have power. My voice has power. I won’t stop using my voice until someone listens.”
Until Someone Listens: A Story About Borders, Family and One Girl’s Mission is published in the US by Macmillan
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Newsroom Confidential review: Margaret Sullivan’s timely tale of the Times and the PostThe public editor and media columnist is fascinating and unsparing, particularly about the Times’ Trump-Clinton fiasco Margaret Sullivan has written a beguiling memoir which shares many of the virtues of the work that brought her national attention as public editor of the New York Times and then as a media columnist for the Washington Post. The virtues of her columns, excellent news judgment and old-fashioned common sense, are again on display.Unchecked review: how Trump dodged two impeachments … and the January 6 committee?Read moreEspecially in the early part of the book, Sullivan pats herself on the back quite a bit for breaking a glass ceiling by becoming one of the first woman editors of an important regional paper, the Buffalo News. But she is capable of self-criticism, especially for a painful mistake when her paper decided to publish the criminal backgrounds of the victims of a mass shooting. “The Black community was furious” because the paper had deepened “the pain of family and friends who were mourning their loved ones” – and “they were right”. Too often victims of police violence in Buffalo had been described as “no angel”.She quotes Goethe on the benefits of such a mistake: “By seeking and blundering, we learn.”The next phase of her career, when she identified the blunders of editors and reporters at the New York Times, then publicized them in her columns, is the most interesting part of the book.Sullivan quickly learned what I discovered many years ago, when I switched from writing about politicians and prosecutors for the Times to critiquing journalists for Newsweek: reporters have by far the thinnest skins of any public figures. It’s not surprising: a big reason many choose to become journalists is to give themselves a feeling of being in control, so they often feel discombobulated when they are the subject of an interview instead of its progenitor.To her credit, Sullivan offended the sports editor and the politics editor of the Times equally. She showed she had the right instincts with her first blogpost, calling for “rigorous adherence not just to the facts but to the truth, and away from the defensive performative neutrality that some were beginning to call false balance or false equivalence (‘Some say the earth is round; others insist it is flat’ or, more pertinently ‘Some say climate change is real and caused partly by human behavior; others insist it doesn’t exist’.)”She almost never had “a completely comfortable day” as public editor, which means she did a good job: “If the people I worked next to were happy with me, I felt guilty for being too soft on the institution … If they were upset with me – sometimes even furious” she worried she had been too harsh.One of her worthiest crusades was against the vast use of anonymous sources, especially in Washington stories. When Eric Schmitt, a national security reporter, was appointed to a committee on reporting practices, he was astonished to learn that readers’ “number one complaint, far and away, was anonymous sources”. A reader wrote to Sullivan: “I beseech the Times not to facilitate government acting like the Wizard of Oz – behind a curtain.”Although Sullivan was at the paper a decade after its worst modern anonymous sources fiasco – dozens of stories promoting the idea that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were real – she found practically nobody had learned any lessons.The practice was still “vastly overused … not just for ultra-sensitive reporting on the national security beat but also for all kinds of frivolous purposes – in gossipy entertainment pieces, in personality profiles, in real estate stories”. Sullivan inaugurated “AnonyWatch”, asking readers to send examples of anonymous sourcing.Some of the very worst journalism practiced by the Times during Sullivan’s tenure was its coverage of the 2016 election. The paper’s first woman executive editor, Jill Abramson, assigned Amy Chozick to report on Hillary Clinton full-time in 2013. Another press critic, Tom Rosenstiel, pointed out it was probably a pretty bad idea to “perpetuate the permanent campaign” three years before the first primary.Chozick’s first big feature for the Sunday magazine was called Planet Hillary, illustrated by an image of Clinton’s face as “a fleshy globe”. Sullivan agreed with the reader who wrote, “The now-viral image is hideously ugly, demeaning, sexist and completely premature.”Times editors up to Abramson, who approved the image, “couldn’t understand the fuss”. To Sullivan it was an early warning that “when it came to covering Hillary Clinton, Times journalists often took things too far”.Things went steeply downhill in 2015 when the Times – and the Washington Post and Fox News – promoted a book by the Breitbart contributor Peter Schweizer, Clinton Cash: the Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.How Chozick chose to write about this crude propaganda? “Already the Republican Rand Paul has called its findings ‘big news’ that will ‘shock people’ and make voters ‘question’ the candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton”.Things got dramatically worse with the paper’s obsession with Clinton’s emails, and FBI director James Comey’s decision to put them back in the news a few days before the election. By then Dean Baquet was Times editor. He vastly overplayed Comey’s announcement with three big stories, including one by Chozick and Patrick Healey headlined “With 11 Days to Go, Trump Says Revelation ‘Changes Everything’”.Confidence Man review: Maggie Haberman takes down TrumpRead moreSullivan observes that framing must have caused “rejoicing in the GOP camp”. It did.The Columbia Journalism Review reported that in six days, the Times “ran as many cover stories” about Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up the election.Comey shut down his investigation again. But the damage was done.The Times editorial page compensated a little bit for its news coverage by giving Clinton an enthusiastic endorsement. But as Sullivan points out, editorials rarely sway elections while “relentless front-page political coverage can, especially when it’s in the hugely influential New York Times”.“In this case,” she writes, “I believe it did.”
Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life is published in the US by St Martin’s Press
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Interview‘Devoid of shame’: January 6 cop Michael Fanone on Trump’s Republican partyJ Oliver Conroy A pro-Trump mob almost killed him – and some politicians want to pretend it never happened Almost a year after pro-Trump rioters at the US Capitol beat and electrocuted Michael Fanone nearly to death – causing him to go into cardiac arrest, lose consciousness for four minutes and become one of the most famous police officers in America – he decided to end his 20-year law enforcement career with a resignation letter written on a paper napkin.Capitol attack officer Fanone hits out at ‘weasel’ McCarthy in startling interviewRead more“I wrote, ‘Go fuck yourselves,’” Fanone recalled, neck tattoos peeking from under a dark sport coat and grey-streaked beard, as he dined in one of the quieter corners of a steakhouse in Manhattan.A friend, he said, translated his resignation into more formal English: “You know, ‘I’m grateful for the time and memories here …’ Blah, blah, blah, blah.”While months of medical treatment had helped Fanone mostly recover from his injuries, his fury at politicians who wanted to erase January 6 from memory remained – and his desire to name and shame “sniveling weasel bitches” such as the Republican House leader, Kevin McCarthy, often and with an irreverence that was making his police career untenable.“What continues to boil my blood,” said Fanone, a one-time Trump voter, is how the Capitol attack “has become so politicized. It’s to the point where I have this adversarial relationship with most Republicans, who I see as either indifferent to what happened or on the side of the insurrectionists.”What also hadn’t gone away were the fellow cops who whispered behind his back or exited a room when he entered – because they were Trump supporters who resented his criticisms of the former president, or because they thought he was a showboat exaggerating his experience at the Capitol for money or attention.Fanone, a vice-officer who became one of the star witnesses of the January 6 hearings, could no longer do undercover work and was a political hot potato. After his superiors re-assigned him to IT (“I have no background in it. I type with one finger”) and he arrived to find a desk draped in plastic with no chair or computer, he decided, five years short of his pension, to quit.Now Fanone is adjusting to a strange new life. He declined an offer to pose for Playgirl but accepted a CNN contract as a law enforcement analyst. Learning not to curse on air has been hard – “I did get in a lot of trouble,” he has said, “for saying I thought history was going to shit on Mike Pence’s head” – so, on the infrequent occasions he actually joins a segment, he’ll bring a notecard: DON’T SAY FUCK.He has published a memoir, Hold the Line: The Insurrection and One Cop’s Battle for America’s Soul, written with John Shiffman, an investigative reporter for Reuters. He has friends in surprisingly high places – Sean Penn once took him to dinner, and Nancy Pelosi is known to check in at 3am.Yet his financial situation, he said, isn’t what everyone assumes. His medical and insurance bills are high. He lives in a one-bedroom outfitted with lawn furniture and he’s embarrassed he doesn’t have more space for his four daughters when they visit.He spends as much time as possible with them. When he’s not doing that, he does quiet, solitary things. He lifts weights and most days runs six to eight miles; hangs out with his “failed hunting dog”, Buddy; takes to the woods to stalk deer and turkey; ruminates about the future of the country.“I’m not looking to fucking make money off my experiences on January 6, outside of feeding my family,” he said. “If people have a problem with me writing a book, they can kiss my ass.”He chewed on a steak salad and added, very deliberately: “All I want is to talk about my experience, educate a few people, maybe engage in constructive conversation about police reform. After there’s accountability for January 6, I hope to ride off into the sunset of obscurity, never to be heard from again.”Fanone speaks in a south Maryland drawl, redolent of a crab fisherman or a character on The Wire. The grandson of a steel mill worker and the son of an attorney and a social worker, he briefly attended Georgetown Prep, one of the nation’s elite schools, but it didn’t stick – after a year he was asked “not to return”.His parents separated when he was young, so he split time between his father’s white-shoe world and his mother’s more middle-class or blue-collar one. After dropping out of high school, he worked construction and eventually earned a GED.He started his law enforcement career with the US Capitol police but guard duty bored him. After a very public exchange of views with a colleague – “two Capitol cops in uniform brawling in broad daylight on Independence Avenue” – he quit to join the larger Metropolitan police department.Fanone was full of “piss and vinegar”. A vice posting suited him fine. He spent much of his time undercover or hiding in dumpsters or trees (locals called him Spider-mMan). Over the years he grew less hotheaded and more focused on meticulous operations that would hold up in court – and nail traffickers.On the grey morning of 6 January 2021, as Trump supporters converged on Congress, Fanone was supposed to be working a drug op with his partner, Jimmy Albright, and his most trusted informant, Leslie Perkins, a transgender black sex worker who has since died of illness.The drug op never happened. Fanone had assumed the Capitol protest was under control but he began hearing unsettling radio calls. An order to don “hard gear”. A plea for munitions. An ominous request for the FBI hostage rescue team.He drove 70mph to his station, arriving as a commander called an “officer down” on behalf of his entire unit – something Fanone had never heard in two decades as a cop. He changed into a uniform and grabbed a helmet, a decision he believes may have saved his life.At the Capitol, he and Albright descended to the Lower West Tunnel, where they had heard the situation was dire. Fanone’s bodycam recorded footage that will probably go down as one of the most visceral documents of January 6.Inside the tunnel, 40 exhausted officers, formed into something resembling a huge rugby scrum, were trying to stop a crowd of thousands forcing its way through a door.Many of the rioters had come prepared, with gas masks, body armor, helmets, bear spray. Some wielded stolen riot shields. In contrast, many of the cops, like Fanone, had “self-deployed” without gas masks or other gear. There was vomit on the floor.“Hold the line!” a commander, Ray Kyle, was shouting. “Do not give up that door! We are not going to lose that door!”Fanone and Albright pushed forward. At the front, Fanone confronted what he describes in his memoir as a “human battering ram” – in his bodycam footage you can hear him grunting and gasping as hundreds of pounds of force presses down. Yet for a moment, despite everything, the police actually seemed to be gaining ground.Then someone shouted: “Knife!”As Fanone glanced to see what was happening, a rioter seized him by the neck and dragged him into the crowd, yelling: “I got one!”A news photograph captured the moment Fanone was enveloped by the mob. He is surrounded by heaving bodies, his face grimacing in fear. A rioter is beating him with the pole of a “Blue Lives Matter” flag – meant to signify support for law enforcement.Blows landed from every direction. Hands fumbled at his gun. Soon Fanone was 50ft from the tunnel. He tried to turn back. A Three Percenter militiaman blocked his path.Someone pressed a taser to Fanone’s neck and repeatedly electrocuted him. He heard someone say: “Kill him with his own gun!”“I’ve got kids!” Fanone screamed. “I’ve got kids!”At that point some of the rioters intervened. Someone shouted: “We’re better than this!” People grabbed Fanone and bore him back to the police line.Fanone stumbled into the tunnel and lost consciousness. He came to as his partner prepared to drive him to hospital.“No dreams,” Fanone told me. “No flashbacks.” In fact, he can’t remember anything that happened between the time he shouted he had children and when he woke up in the tunnel. The hospital diagnosed cardiac arrest and traumatic brain injury. The rioters had bestowed the sixth concussion of Fanone’s life and seared the flesh of his neck. He was in agony but, with a narcotics officer’s wariness, refused most pain medication.Only while recovering did Fanone learn of the full mendacity of January 6: Trump’s dying Roman emperor routine; Pence’s tepid decision to do the right thing; the Missouri senator Josh Hawley’s choice to stoke the mob then flee “like a bitch”.Later, angered by news that 21 House Republicans had voted against awarding a medal to the cops who defended the Capitol, Fanone forced a meeting with McCarthy. He was joined by a fellow officer, Harry Dunn, and Gladys Sicknick, whose son, officer Brian Sicknick, died the day after the attack.Fanone asked McCarthy “about certain members of the GOP I call the ‘tinfoil hat brigade’ – Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Louie Gohmert. These people have risen to the level of not just an embarrassment within the Republican party, but to humanity.”After some “verbal masturbation”, Fanone said, McCarthy effectively admitted that he was unwilling, or unable, to control radicals in his party. Fanone secretly recorded the entire conversation – and leaked it.It had little to no effect. Nor did Fanone’s testimony at the January 6 hearings.“These people are devoid of shame,” he said. “There’s no way to shame them into doing what’s right. And that has a lot to do with Trump as the ultimate ‘ends-justify-means’ guy.”The conspiracy sphere even painted Fanone as part of a false-flag operation, “like a love child of Nancy Pelosi that’s grown in a petri dish and has been quietly part of some sleeper cell that was awakened for this event”, as he put it to Rolling Stone.A self-described redneck, Fanone said he understands Trump’s appeal, even if it’s a fraud. He voted for Trump in 2016 because he seemed more pro-police than Hillary Clinton. He came to regret it. Fanone’s ex-wife and three of his daughters are Asian American. During Covid, he was angered by Trump’s insinuating references to the “China virus”.Fanone exudes discipline. Early in our meal he carefully removed an onion ring garnish from his salad, and did not touch the fries I ordered for the table. But his foot fluttered with nervous energy under the table.Several cops who defended the Capitol later took their own lives. Fanone has described dark moments of his own, sitting and staring at his gun.“There are a lot of officers suffering in silence or self-medicating with alcohol. It’s probably going to lead to more tragedies down the line.”Unchecked review: how Trump dodged two impeachments … and the January 6 committee?Read moreA waiter recognized Fanone and thanked him for what he did at the Capitol. Several diners did the same. It happens daily, he said.“I try to always talk to them. I don’t see that as a chore. It’s part of why I’m speaking out. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make me feel better. I wish it did.”Fanone doesn’t know what the future holds. He might return to construction. He’d also be interested in serving on a policing commission, as an intermediary, pro-cop and pro-reform. He rejects calls to defund the police – training is the first thing cut, he said – but is sympathetic to Black Lives Matter. He’s fond of saying that overthrowing a CVS drugstore is different from overthrowing the government.That’s the only office he’d be interested in holding. Look at George Washington, he said. “When it came to the presidency, they had to drag that motherfucker – all 6ft 4in – kicking and screaming. After his term was done, he couldn’t get home fast enough.”He added: “And don’t volunteer me. I don’t want it.”TopicsBooksUS Capitol attackUS politicsUS policingRepublicansUS CongressPolitics booksinterviewsReuse this content More

Giuliani names Trump election deniers as witnesses in legal ethics caseDoug Mastriano, Jenna Ellis and Peter Navarro among those named in case related to attempt to overturn Pennsylvania result Facing a Washington DC legal ethics prosecution over his role in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani has turned to a cast of characters from that failed effort.Giuliani review: Andrew Kirtzman’s definitive life of Trump’s last lackeyRead moreA witness list filed by lawyers for Giuliani on Friday included Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for governor in Pennsylvania; the former Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis; and Christina Bobb, an attorney currently caught up in Trump’s fight with the US Department of Justice over the retention of classified records.Also among those named were the former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi; Peter Navarro, a former Trump trade adviser charged with contempt of Congress in the January 6 investigation; former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski; and Bernard Kerik, a former New York police commissioner who Trump pardoned of felonies that sent him to jail.Phil Waldron, a former army colonel turned Texas bar owner who pushed baseless electoral fraud claims, was also on the witness list.Giuliani is accused of mounting a frivolous election challenge in Pennsylvania – one of four states, with Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, on which the attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential election victory focused and which Trump this week named in an intemperate response to a subpoena from the House January 6 committee.The DC office of disciplinary counsel intends to call Giuliani as a witness. The former mayor appears on his own list too.Giuliani has said he had a “good faith basis” for contesting mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.But his work as Trump’s personal attorney – for which he has famously struggled to secure payment – landed him in legal jeopardy on a number of fronts.Giuliani’s role in approaches to Ukraine for political dirt on Trump opponents including Biden landed him in the middle of Trump’s first impeachment.Trump’s second impeachment, for inciting the Capitol riot on 6 January 2021, was the result of the failure of legal attempts to overturn the 2020 election.In Georgia, Giuliani has been named as the target of a criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the election result there.In New York, he has been sued by Dominion Voting Systems, a maker of election machinery.Giuliani is also suspended from practicing law in New York state.Writing for Slate, the Harvard law professor Laurence H Tribe and Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor, said Giuliani and the law professor John Eastman were “the two chief ‘generals’ [who] orchestrat[ed] Trump’s abuse of the law to overturn the election”.The authors added: “In joining the bar, lawyers take an oath to support the US constitution much like the one that Article VI of the constitution requires of all public officials. Lawyers who betrayed that oath in ways that led to the deadly insurrection of January 6 are no better than a physician who violates the Hippocratic Oath to ‘do no harm’.”The complaint in the DC case says Giuliani violated two Pennsylvania rules that bar attorneys from bringing frivolous proceedings without a basis in law or fact and prohibit conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice. The charges can lead to the suspension of a license to practice or disbarment.The hearing is set for December.TopicsRudy GiulianiDonald TrumpUS elections 2020US politicsRepublicansLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

Documents reveal Australia’s efforts to stay neutral as Donald Trump claimed electoral fraudUS political insider admits there are ‘reasons to worry’ for its democracy as allies wonder at damage done to the west’s credibility

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A longtime US foreign policy official is frank when asked whether Australia should worry about risks to American democracy.“I can’t, with a straight face, say there’s nothing to worry about,” says Richard Fontaine, head of the Center for a New American Security, an influential Washington thinktank.Visiting Canberra this week, he says: “I spent seven years of my life working in the US Senate, and I never in a million years thought that I would see a mob trying to overturn the certification of a presidential election by storming the US Capitol. It’s unthinkable, but this is where we are. So there are certainly some reasons for concern.”New documents obtained by Guardian Australia show how Australia tried to avoid wading into controversy during that turbulent period by stressing its confidence in American institutions to ensure a peaceful transition of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.Australian officials were closely following news reports and monitoring statements by senior members of Trump’s cabinet in the weeks after the then-president’s refusal to concede defeat in the 2020 presidential election and in the period around the attempted insurrection at the Capitol building on 6 January 2021.Capitol attack panel votes to subpoena Trump – ‘the central cause of January 6’Read more‘Will there be a peaceful transition of power?’One briefing provided to Australia’s then foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, in early January noted that Trump “has not conceded and continues to pursue legal challenges to electoral processes”.The briefing drew attention to a report in the Washington Post based on “an hour-long recording of a phone call between President Trump and Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, the official responsible for administering the state’s elections”.“During the call, President Trump pressured fellow Republican Raffensperger to ‘find 11,780 votes’ and recalculate the results of the election in Trump’s favour,” said the briefing material obtained under freedom of information laws.The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade advised Payne not to “add” to commentary about Trump’s attempt to pressure Raffensperger.A key line for public consumption was that American leadership was “indispensable” to meeting global challenges and that the alliance between Australia and the US was “enduring and built on shared democratic values”.But there was apparently enough concern about the situation for officials to outline a response if any journalist asked the direct question: “Will there be a peaceful transition of power?”The official response was: “The United States is a great democracy that has handled peaceful transitions of power for many years and we have every confidence that will continue.”The situation then escalated sharply with the deadly violence at the US Capitol building, prompting Dfat to prepare a detailed rundown of the events, including temporary suspension of the congressional certification of electoral college votes.“After the Capitol building was secured, certification of electoral college votes continued on the night of 6 January, with Biden being confirmed as president-elect,” the updated briefing explained.“Some Republican lawmakers challenged Biden’s victories in Arizona and Pennsylvania, but the objections were rejected by most Republicans and all Democrats, and failed.”This Dfat briefing noted that the protesters “had arrived from a rally held earlier outside the White House addressed by President Trump” who had “claimed to be the legitimate winner of an election that had been rigged and stolen”.“Trump encouraged the crowd to walk to the Capitol building and ‘give our Republicans … the kind of pride and boldness they need to take back our country,’” the document said.The briefing detailed the subsequent resignations of a number of senior Trump administration officials, the US House of Representatives’ vote to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection”, and moves by social-media companies to suspend Trump’s accounts.Updated “talking points” for Payne included condemnation of “any use or threat of violence to interfere with democratic processes” – but argued that US institutions were “robust” and welcomed Trump’s publicly stated “commitment to an orderly transition of power”.Too close for comfortThe events of January 2021 and their continuing fallout have caused discomfort for policymakers in Australia and other US allies, which count on the US for security and whose leaders often proclaim “shared values”.Polls show about seven in 10 Republicans do not accept Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election – and the party’s base is increasingly punishing any Republican politicians who try to hold Trump to account for the lies. Liz Cheney, vice-chair of the committee investigating 6 January, will lose her seat in Congress after a primary challenge.Ahead of next month’s midterm elections, a number of Republican candidates who doubt the 2020 election results, or in some cases actively worked to overturn them, are running for positions in which they would have tremendous influence over how votes are cast and counted.Trump privately admitted he lost 2020 election, top aides testifyRead moreFontaine admits he cannot say all is well. The former adviser to the late Republican senator John McCain says there are “reasons to worry” – but he takes heart from the fact “the institutions of democracy have prevailed every time thus far”.“Trump himself claims that he didn’t lose the election, but who’s in the White House? Joe Biden, and Trump’s at Mar-a-Lago,” says Fontaine, who has also worked at the state department, the national security council, and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.“I mean, his own vice-president certified the election for the actual winner. The courts, including judges appointed by Donald Trump himself, dismissed frivolous claims.”But some US allies worry the events have seriously damaged the west’s credibility. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, revealed foreign leaders had told him of their disenchantment. “Many are saying to us: ‘Is this model so great? You seem so unhappy. We watched what happened at the Capitol last year, we can see you at home, extremism is on the rise everywhere. You can’t solve extreme poverty. You’re arguing over the climate.’”Credibility gapThe former Labor prime minister Paul Keating argues the US has lost the credibility to champion democracy.“This idea that the US is an exceptional power, that they have God’s ear, proselytising democracy, was fine in the 20th century,” Keating said in a speech this week.“The 20th century was owned by the US [but] the 21st century belongs to someone else.”Keating renewed his longstanding criticism of Australia’s decision to draw even closer to the US through the Aukus nuclear-powered submarine deal, arguing it would increase the chances of being drawn in to an ill-advised war with China. He said the US was “not interested in thinking allies” but wanted “dummies”.But Keating’s view of the strategic circumstances is not shared by senior members of the current generation of political leaders, who are alarmed by China and Russia’s newly inked “no limits” partnership and continue to see the US as critical to Australia’s national security and the stability of the Indo-Pacific.‘Do you believe this?’: New video shows how Nancy Pelosi took charge in Capitol riotRead moreThe opposition leader and former defence minister, Peter Dutton, said this week that it was “a very uncertain world” and Australia needed “strong and powerful friends like the United States”.On a visit to Washington, the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, predicted the relationship would remain strong “no matter who is in the leadership positions of either country”.Chalmers would not reveal whether the Australian government was concerned about the possibility Trump could run again in 2024: “We play the cards that we’re dealt and we don’t involve ourselves in the domestic politics of other countries.”Fontaine believes it is too soon to know whether Trump will run again or the likelihood of a victory – but argues “checks and balances” remain intact.“And it turns out that even when they’re tested in some pretty significant ways they have held, so I think they are likely to hold into the future,” Fontaine says. “The best scenario will be: let’s not test them.”TopicsUS politicsDonald TrumpJoe BidenPaul KeatingPeter DuttonAustralian politicsMarise PaynefeaturesReuse this content More

Barack Obama to campaign for Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin Senate raceBarnes, who would be the first Black senator from Wisconsin, is looking to unseat Republican Ron Johnson Barack Obama, who twice won Wisconsin by large margins, will travel to the battleground state in the final weeks of the current midterm elections, seeking to boost Mandela Barnes, the young lieutenant governor looking to unseat the Republican Ron Johnson in a key US Senate contest.Barnes would be the first Black senator from Wisconsin. He held early leads over Johnson but the Republican, a prominent figure on the GOP hard right, has surged back. This week, a Marquette University Law School poll showed Johnson in the lead.Herschel Walker denies abortion ban support and brandishes ‘police badge’ in Georgia debateRead moreBarnes, who is from Milwaukee, has been trying to energize Black voters in a contest that could decide control of the Senate, which is currently split 50-50 and controlled by Democrats through the vote of the vice-president, Kamala Harris.Obama, the first Black US president, is set to hold an early voting event on 29 October, less than two weeks before election day, in Milwaukee, the largest city in Wisconsin and home to its largest group of African American voters.Politico reported this week that the Barnes campaign was reaching out to high-profile Democrats, seeking support as he slips in the polls. Joe Biden, Harris and Bernie Sanders were also named as potential guests.Since his first run for the Senate in 2010, Johnson has marketed himself as a successful businessman upholding conservative values.But he has leaned heavily into rightwing conspiracy theories around the 2020 presidential election and Covid-19 vaccines and remedies. In turn, his approval rating has dropped to 45%, the second-lowest for a Republican senator.In a recent editorial, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the largest newspaper in the state, called Johnson “the worst Wisconsin representative since the infamous Joseph McCarthy” and reminded readers he promised to serve no more than two terms, which he has now completed.“Voters should hold him to that pledge in November,” the newspaper said.But Johnson’s campaign has been gaining steam. Early polls showed Barnes with a slight edge but Johnson has launched an intense negative ad campaign, attempting to portray Barnes as bad for the economy in a time of high inflation and as a supporter for activists who want to defund police departments.The lieutenant governor has not backed such campaigns.At a heated debate last Thursday, Johnson, when asked to say something nice about his opponent, said that Barnes had loving parents and added: “What puzzles me about that is with that upbringing, why has he turned against America?”Wisconsin has long been a swing state. After voting for Obama twice, Donald Trump beat Hilary Clinton in 2016 by less than one point. Biden won with a similarly small margin four years later.The state is home to more tight races this midterm season, including the Democratic governor, Tony Evers, being challenged by Tim Michels, a construction company co-owner endorsed by Trump. Marquette polls have for months shown that race to be about even.Tammy Baldwin, the state’s other US senator, and Gwen Moore, a congresswoman who represents Milwaukee, are also slated to appear with Democratic candidates for office, including the serving attorney general, Josh Kaul.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022Barack ObamaWisconsinDemocratsUS SenateUS politicsnewsReuse this content More