US Politics

The most terrifying case of all is about to be heard by the US supreme courtSteven DonzigerIf the court upholds the rogue ‘Independent State Legislature’ theory, it would put the US squarely on the path to authoritarianism It is well-known that intense competition between democracy, authoritarianism and fascism is playing out across the globe in a variety of ways – including in the United States. This year’s US supreme court term, which started this week, is a vivid illustration of how the situation is actually worse than most people understand.A supermajority of six, unelected ultraconservatives justices – five of which were put on the bench by presidents who did not win the popular vote – have aggressively grabbed yet another batch of cases that will allow them to move American law to the extreme right and threaten US democracy in the process. The leading example of this disturbing shift is a little-known case called Moore v Harper, which could lock in rightwing control of the United States for generations.The heart of the Moore case is a formerly fringe legal notion called the Independent State Legislature (ISL) theory. This theory posits that an obscure provision in the US constitution allowing state legislatures to set “time, place, and manner” rules for federal elections should not be subject to judicial oversight. In other words, state legislatures should have the absolute power to determine how federal elections are run without court interference.Think about this theory in the context of the last US election. After Joseph Biden defeated Donald Trump resoundingly in both the popular vote and in the electoral college, Trump tried to organize a massive intimidation campaign to steal the election which played out in the storming of the Capitol building on 6 January. But behind the scenes, the legal core of this attempt was to convince the many Republican-controlled state legislatures (30 out of 50 states) to send slates of fake Trump electors from states like Arizona, Georgia and Michigan where Trump actually lost the popular vote.If Trump had succeeded, he would have “won” the election via the electoral college (itself an anti-democratic relic) and been able to stay in office another term. If the supreme court buys the theory in the Moore case, this could easily happen in 2024 and beyond. In fact, it is possible Republicans will never lose another election again if this theory is adopted as law. Or put another way, whether Republicans win or lose elections via the popular vote will not matter because they will be able to maintain power regardless.That’s not democracy. And it would put the United States squarely in the same category as authoritarian countries with illiberal leaders like Hungary, Poland, Turkey and Russia. Each of the leaders of those countries ostensibly “won” elections that were structurally rigged to virtually guarantee they could not lose.It is disturbing that the supreme court used its increasingly diminished credibility with the public to take on a case that has no real purpose other than what I am describing in this column. In the United States, our highest court only rules on approximately 70 cases a year out of the 7,000 petitions for review that are presented. It is a relatively lazy court. In contrast, the supreme court of Brazil rules on approximately 100,000 cases a year. If the US court agreed to accept the Moore case for review, it almost certainly plans to endorse this rogue ISL theory, that could blow up elections and democracy in the United States as we know it.Context is important. This situation did not just come out of nowhere, but really is the product of a multi-decade strategy by a coalition of corporations and rightwing religious fundamentalists dating back decades to take control of the US government.Recent US history shows how spectacularly effective rightwing funders, representing wealthy Americans and corporations, have been in essentially buying control over our political system. These forces correctly perceive that if democracy is allowed to exist in an unfettered and neutral way, then corporate profits will be diminished and the powerful fossil fuel industry will be phased out over time. So they are organizing to prevent that from happening.This rightwing funding network simply could not exist with the enormous power that it has accumulated without the US supreme court’s Citizens United case, which laid the groundwork for the current takeover of the supreme court. One industrialist just turned over his entire $1.6bn fortune to an organization controlled by Leonard Leo, the brilliant mastermind behind the pro-corporate Federalist Society, which essentially put all six of the ultraconservatives on the court.Should the court endorse the ISL theory, Republican-controlled legislatures also will be able to gerrymander political districts to lock in permanent control of federal elections without judicial oversight. Gerrymandering is a fancy term to describe another method of voter suppression in the United States: setting district maps to guarantee that progressive or minority candidates simply cannot get elected except in pre-approved districts. It explains, for example, why in the state of North Carolina Republicans control eight of 13 seats in the US House of Representatives despite the Democratic party winning well over 50% of the statewide vote in the last several elections.The Moore case would in practice strip people of the right to fair elections by placing electoral power in the hands of a small group of officials at the state level who set district maps. In a presidential election, these officials could determine what slate of electors gets put forth to the electoral college, regardless of the outcome of the state’s popular vote.In the gerrymandered map at the heart of the Moore case, an evenly divided popular vote in North Carolina would have awarded 10 of the state’s 14 seats in the House of Representatives to Republicans.While many are focused on the January 6 proceedings, the real coup has been going on quietly in the supreme court without a single shot being fired. As the judicial branch is set to deliberate a case that could drastically weaken the other branches of government, never has it been more clear that it is time to rein in the power of our least democratic institution.
Steven Donziger is a human rights lawyer and environmental justice advocate. He is also a Guardian US columnist
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InterviewWes Moore bids to become Maryland governor: ‘I’m running against an insurrectionist’Martin PengellyThe 43-year-old military veteran is confident he can defeat Trumpist Dan Cox and become the state’s first black governor Wes Moore will in all likelihood be the next governor of Maryland. A month before election day, one poll gave him a 32-point lead over his Republican opponent, Dan Cox.If successful, Moore will be the state’s first Black governor – and only the third Black governor of any state. He stresses the need for bipartisan support in a time of divide.He says: “The only way you’re going to see polling results like that is if you’re showing a measure of support not just among Democrats, but amongst independents and amongst Republicans.Senate rival accuses Dr Oz of killing over 300 dogs as medical researcherRead more“I think you’re seeing how the state … is rallying behind that idea that we can go further together, that people are tired and exhausted, frankly, of being at each other’s throats, that we are going to build a new type of coalition inside the state that incorporates people from a variety of political parties.”At 43, Moore’s résumé includes a Rhodes scholarship, a tour of Afghanistan, a Bush White House job and corporate and non-profit experience. He is part of a diverse crop of new leaders in a Democratic party headed by a 79-year-old president, Joe Biden, and congressional leaders among whom Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, is a spring chicken at 71.He insists: “We’re taking nothing for granted. We are running every day like we’re 10 points behind. I believe that’s how we were able to win the primary. And I believe that’s how we’re going to be able to win the general as well.”Moore emerged from a bruising, nine-strong primary field. In the general election it’s him versus Cox, and here’s the crux: the Republican, a state representative, attended Donald Trump’s rally near the White House on January 6, before the Capitol riot. The Maga hardcore will back him, but it is unlikely many others will.“There are issues on the ballot,” Moore says. “You have very clear distinctions about where we are when it comes to reproductive health, when we talk about things like economic growth, when we talk about how to support education.“But I do think one of the things on the ballot in this election is this idea of patriotism, where we have not just very different views, but very different histories when it comes to what it means to defend the values of your country and fight for a better future.“I have an opponent who talks about backing the blue, but was supportive of a group of people who stormed the Capitol and were risking the lives of police officers. Someone who says they believe in freedom, yet at the same time would criminalise abortions, for both patients and providers, even in cases of incest and rape.“You have someone who’s talking about patriotism but their definition of patriotism is putting on a baseball cap and calling the vice-president a traitor, while a mob asks for him to be hung.“I think this bastardisation of the idea of patriotism will not be tolerated … I am running against someone who is an insurrectionist. I won’t be lectured by him, nor anyone else in this wing of the Republican party who wants to define patriotism as people who are willing to fight for the overturning of the government.“That’s not patriotism. My definition of patriotism was serving as a member of the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan and leading paratroopers in combat.”Moore is “confident” he will get Republican votes, in part because “we’re campaigning all over the state, in Democratic areas, independent areas, Republican areas … I’m going to the areas where there’s not a lot of Democrats but I tell people, ‘Listen, there’s a lot of Marylanders. And I plan on being their governor too.’“In the military, we learned a basic mantra: leave no one behind. And I live by it. I never once asked my soldiers ‘What’s your political party?’ Because it didn’t matter. My goal was to unify everyone around a single mission. And that’s exactly what I plan on doing as governor.”Maryland is currently governed by a Republican, Larry Hogan, a lonely moderate in a party in Trump’s grip. In 2020, rather than vote for Trump or Biden, Hogan wrote in Ronald Reagan. In 2022, he has spoken forcefully against Cox but has not said he will vote for Moore or endorse him.Given Moore’s focus on patriotism, a concept generally easier for Republicans to wield in elections, is he disappointed Hogan has not told Republicans to cross the divide?“Well, I think Governor Hogan has been very clear on the fact that he’s not going to support his party’s nominee. Governor Hogan has said that not only does he think that my opponent is mentally unstable – he’s called him a ‘QAnon whack job’ – he has said, ‘I wouldn’t even give him a tour of the governor’s office.’“So the governor has been full-throated in his displeasure with where the party went. I’d love the governor’s vote, I hope that he would vote for me in the general election. But I also know that there’s been no nuance in the governor’s displeasure on who the Republican nominee is.”A spokesman for Hogan did not respond to a query about any endorsement of Moore.Moore hopes to work to instill “progressive patriotism” via a programme to encourage voluntary service after high school, “essentially democratising the gap-year process that only certain students can take advantage of” without government support.Such a programme, he says, is “absolutely achievable and absolutely fundable because we’re going to use … state and federal resources in addition to public-private partnerships”.The need for partnerships extends to Moore’s own party, where at least for now he is holding progressives and moderates together.“I haven’t been a politician,” he says. “I didn’t come up in this political world where people are placed in boxes and get their talking points from the box that they live in. I came up from a perspective where I built alliances and allegiances across the board and across sectors, and across political parties, because my whole focus throughout my entire career has been get big things done.“We’ve been able to build a very interesting coalition of people, from leaders in the business community to labor leaders, from Progressive Maryland to the Fraternal Order of Police. I’m offering them all the same thing: a chance to be involved in the policymaking conversation.”The last Democratic governor of Maryland, Martin O’Malley, agrees. In an email, he said Moore “has the ability, because of his victory, his candidacy, and his message, to unite all the various factions of the Democratic party”.After two terms in Annapolis, O’Malley ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. Some expect Moore to take a similar path. He is focused on the task at hand.He says: “I understand, as chief executive, I’ve got to make decisions. And I will make decisions every single day and wake up the next morning and make some more. But the thing I am offering everybody as part of our coalition is that you are going to have a seat at the table as we push forward for the same collective goal.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022MarylandDemocratsUS politicsinterviewsReuse this content More

‘Innocent is innocent, period’: Richard Glossip on facing execution again Oklahoma man has had his execution temporarily called off several times since he was sentenced to death as the list of flaws in the prosecution case grows longer by the dayRichard Glossip is intimately acquainted with the cell in Oklahoma state penitentiary known as “LL”. He’s been inside its 8ft by 12ft grey walls three times, waiting to be taken to the room next door – the death chamber.Glossip was brought into the cell each time at 3am on the morning of his scheduled execution. In a letter and phone call with the Guardian from death row in McAlester, Oklahoma, last week, he described what it was like spending what he thought were his final few hours inside LL as the clock ticked down.“One side of the cell is covered in bright lights that never go off, like you are out in the sun,” he said. “You are watched by cameras as well as a guard who sits outside your door 24/7.”As Glossip’s date with death grew closer, guards started holding mock executions. They would lead an actor dressed in prison uniform into the death chamber, strap him on the gurney and then role-play the execution procedure from start to finish.The entire dress rehearsal was carried out in Glossip’s full view. “I could see everything. I could have stayed in the back of the cell and tried not to watch, but I didn’t because I knew I was next.”The most recent time Glossip was in cell LL was on 30 September 2015. “It was the hardest day of my life,” he said.He remembers shivering in his boxer shorts, pacing up and down to keep warm in the cell which was cold as a meat locker. He repeatedly asked the guards what was happening, and could he talk to his attorney.No idea, and no, they replied.“The execution team was supposed to come and get me within 15 minutes and take me in [to the death chamber]. But nobody came. I paced and paced, prayed harder than I ever have. ‘Please God, stop them from doing this to me’.”Two hours after his scheduled execution time, a man in a suit entered LL and told Glossip that he had been granted a stay. “It was like the heaviest weight had been lifted off of me,” he said. “My prayers were answered.” The euphoria the prisoner felt after each of his three executions were temporarily called off didn’t last long. Not when a state as relentless in its pursuit of capital punishment as Oklahoma was out to get him.He was sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of Barry Van Treese, owner of a Best Budget motel in Oklahoma City where Glossip worked as manager. No one has ever accused him of actually killing Van Treese.Rather, Justin Sneed, a maintenance worker at the motel with a methamphetamine habit, confessed that all on his own he beat Van Treese to death with a baseball bat. Sneed later turned state’s witness and testified that Glossip had ordered the murder.On the strength of Sneed’s testimony, with no other forensic or corroborating evidence, the state secured a death sentence for Glossip while the sole killer, Sneed, was given life without parole. Glossip, who went through two trials in 1998 and 2004 and was convicted twice, has always pleaded innocence.In August, Oklahoma’s governor Kevin Stitt granted Glossip another reprieve, ordering a 60-day stay to give the courts time to consider new evidence. The postponement came just a day before the prisoner was due to be put back into “death watch”, the month-long formal countdown which ends with him being put in cell LL.Now the whole grim process is starting up again. A new execution date has been set and unless something dramatic happens Glossip, 59, will before long find himself once again back inside LL at 3am, watching the clock tick down.It’s a prospect that leaves his lawyer, Don Knight, profoundly troubled. He is distressed that his client has been brought so close to execution multiple times, likening the trauma to the way Islamic State has taken hostages to be beheaded and then called off the killing only to repeat it the following day.“That’s where we are, we’ve fallen that low,” Knight said.The lawyer is also deeply concerned about Glossip because he is convinced that an innocent man is facing imminent execution. Knight has been involved in about 50 capital cases and for him, the Glossip case stands in a league of its own.“From the very first moment I saw this case, it never made any sense,” he said in an interview. “It was blatantly obvious to me, from the start, that this was a bad prosecution.”Last year the global law firm Reed Smith was invited by state legislators to take a close look at the Glossip conviction. They produced a 343-page report which revealed a spate of alarming deficiencies in the prosecution.The firm discovered that the police investigation into Van Treese’s murder had been glaringly mishandled. Sneed, the sole killer and the state’s star witness, had been contaminated – he only implicated Glossip as the mastermind behind the murder after detectives invoked the motel manager’s name six times during the interrogation.Reed Smith revealed that critical physical evidence and financial documents had been destroyed by prosecutors before Glossip’s trial – a gross violation of legal process – while other evidence that could have transformed the case was never presented to the jury. The firm concluded that “no reasonable juror hearing the complete record would have convicted Richard Glossip of first-degree murder”.Since the Reed Smith report was released in June, an avalanche of new information has been obtained casting further doubt on the conviction and death sentence.Investigators found a handwritten letter from Sneed to his defense lawyer dated 2007, three years after the killer’s testimony at trial sent Glossip to death row. “There are a lot of things right now that are eating at me. Somethings I need to clean up,” he wrote. “I think you know were (sic) I’m going it was a mistake reliving this.”Fresh doubt about the Sneed’s reliability as a witness has surfaced in the past two weeks. Reed Smith has put out new findings that show that he discussed “recanting” his testimony with several people over an 11-year period.The most powerful new evidence points to allegedly improper communications between the lead prosecutor at Glossip’s trial, Connie Smothermon, and Sneed’s lawyer Gina Walker (who died in 2020). Lawyers for Glossip argue this was a breach of sequestration – the rule that prevents witnesses hearing what other witnesses say to avoid tainting their testimony.Documents disclosed by the state attorney general last month contained email exchanges between Smothermon and Walker. In them, the prosecutor raised concerns about a specific aspect of Sneed’s testimony – a knife.Sneed had told police that he was the only person present when he battered Van Treese to death. He also insisted that he had not used a knife in the attack.Yet on 25 May 2004 the medical examiner at Glossip’s trial, Dr Chai Choi, told the jury that the victim had puncture wounds on the body and that these amounted to a “stabbing type injury”. A knife was found underneath Van Treese’s corpse.How could Van Treese have cuts on his body when Sneed was the only attacker but did not use the knife? According to Reed Smith investigators, Smothermon sent an email to Sneed’s lawyer on the same day as Choi’s testimony.“Our biggest problem is still the knife,” the prosecutor told Walker. “The victim and Justin both have ‘lacerations’ which could be caused from fighting / falling on furniture with edges or from a knife blade.”She ended the email on a note of urgency. Referring to Sneed, she said: “We should get to him this afternoon.”The next day, 26 May 2004, Sneed addressed the jury at Glossip’s retrial. He now told a very different story, saying that did indeed stab Van Treese in the chest.“It now appears that Sneed tailored his testimony on the use of the knife,” Reed Smith concluded.Unreliable star witness, incompetent police investigation, destroyed evidence, manufactured testimony – the list of flaws in the prosecution case grows longer by the day. “The whole thing from Walker and Smothermon, and Sneed’s changed testimony, it disgusts me,” Knight said.Justin Humphrey, a Republican legislator in Oklahoma, used even sharper words. At a press conference to reveal the new evidence last month, he introduced himself as a “strong proponent of the death penalty”.Then he addressed the prosecutors who had secured Glossip’s death sentence on seemingly shakey grounds: “You put a person on death row, you are looking at taking a person’s life. Which makes you no better than a murderer to me – why would you do that? Why would you manufacture evidence?”The Guardian invited Smothermon, now teaching at the University of Oklahoma, to comment but she did not immediately respond. In a statement, Oklahoma’s current attorney general John O’Connor said that he had seen “no evidence” of Glossip’s innocence.“It is disappointing that Glossip’s supporters are criticizing law enforcement, prosecutors, juries, and judges in an attempt to distract the public from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt of Glossip’s guilt,” O’Connor said.Glossip now has two petitions before the Oklahoma court of criminal appeals calling for a new evidentiary hearing.Knight said that what has happened to Glossip should worry all of us. “This is what happens when the state is allowed to run amok. They can convict anybody of anything. And that’s what happened here. They poured their resources on top of an ordinary guy to show what they could do. And when that’s the case, none of us are safe.”Glossip has been given a new execution date: 8 December. “The clock is ticking again. I can feel it,” he said.On two separate occasions, he was offered a plea deal that would have taken him off death row and given life without parole instead. Both times he declined; he was not prepared to plead guilty to something he says he did not do.“Innocent is innocent, period,” he wrote to the Guardian.I asked him during the prison phone call whether he would regret making that decision were he to find himself, on 8 December, back in cell LL.“I mean yes,” he said. “I still believe that innocent is innocent. You fight again.”Whatever comes?“Whatever comes,” he said.TopicsCapital punishmentOklahomaUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

The pastor v the football player: can Raphael Warnock tackle Herschel Walker? Georgia in focus: Warnock’s fundraising is impressive, though the Democratic senator lacks the name recognition his scandal-prone opponentWhen Democrat Raphael Warnock won his election last year, he celebrated his success as a reflection of America’s promise.Only in this country could the son of a Black woman who once spent her summers picking cotton experience such a dramatic rise, becoming the first African American to represent Georgia in the US Senate, Warnock told his supporters. He implored his new constituents,in the wake of a historically divisive campaign season, to embrace the values that made his win possible.“Will we continue to divide, distract and dishonor one another? Or will we love our neighbors as we love ourselves?” Warnock said in his victory speech. Just hours later, a group of Donald Trump’s supporters breached the Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election. Since then, the country has endured record-high inflation, marked 1 million lives lost to coronavirus and witnessed the end of federal protections for abortion access.She’s Georgia’s great blue hope – but can Stacey Abrams win a crucial race?Read moreIn the face of that national upheaval, Warnock now faces a familiar challenge. Once again, the battle for the Senate runs through Georgia, and Democrats’ hopes for controlling the upper chamber of Congress rest on Warnock’s shoulders. Republicans only need to flip one seat to regain their Senate majority – and given that Joe Biden carried Georgia by just 0.2 points in 2020, all eyes are on Warnock.Or at least most eyes, because Warnock’s opponent is Herschel Walker – a sports celebrity with a history of scandals that reached new heights this week with the accusation that the staunch anti-abortion conservative paid a girlfriend to terminate her pregnancy – reports he has denied but that only grew more grave after his own son appeared to back them.Warnock and his supporters, meanwhile, are hoping that his compelling personal story, combined with his accomplishments in Congress so far, can again carry him to victory. The 11th of 12 children, Warnock grew up in the Kayton Homes public housing complex in Savannah, Georgia. After getting his undergraduate degree from the historically Black Morehouse College, Warnock earned his PhD from the Union Theological Seminary and became an ordained minister. In 2005, he was appointed senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist church, where Dr Martin Luther King Jr once preached to the congregation.“I think the historical significance of Ebenezer church instantly put Raphael Warnock into the spotlight,” said Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University.“Any pastor of Ebenezer Baptist church [who] is standing in the pulpit of Martin Luther King, Jr and Sr, is going to be noticed, and so Reverend Warnock certainly had that cachet.”Even after his win last year – he was elected in a runoff vote to finish out the term of the late senator Johnny Isakson, and is now running for his first full six-year term – Warnock has continued to preach at Ebenezer, and can occasionally be seen taking selfies with congregants after services on Sundays. His activism work at Ebenezer appears to have informed his work in Congress, where he has championed voting rights and successfully lobbied to cap insulin costs for Medicare recipients. Warnock has also made a point to work across the aisle, teaming up with Republican Ted Cruz on a highway funding proposal.“I’ve been very impressed at what he’s done in Congress, what he’s managed to get through in the short time that he’s been there,” David Walker, a 39-year-old voter from Marietta, said at a Cobb County Democrats rally last month. “It’s going to help a lot down here.”Bonnie Watson, a 71-year-old voter from Marietta, said she would even consider supporting Warnock for president. “I like his ethics,” Watson said at the rally. “I like the fact that he’s a communicator, that he is a community builder, that he is a leader. But he also is someone I think that can look at both sides and understand what needs to be done.”Even with his time in the Senate, however, Warnock does not have name recognition over his Republican opponent. A former professional football player, Herschel Walker is best known for the Heisman Trophy he won in 1982 while playing for the University of Georgia Bulldogs. Walker helped the Bulldogs win a national championship in 1980; when he left the school, the team retired his jersey number, 34.That fame, combined with Trump’s early endorsement, allowed Walker to easily secure the Republican nomination in May. His team leans hard into his celebrated football record, offering hats to supporters that say “#34 for ‘22”. At a rally last month in Rome, Georgia, attendees waited in a long line to take photos with him.“I’ve watched him since I was six years old with the Georgia Bulldogs play football, and he’s really a great guy,” said Stephanie Nichols, a 48-year-old voter from Rome who carried a football she wanted Walker to sign.That storied history seems to be enough for many Georgia voters to overlook his controversial, and often nonsensical, comments on everything from the pandemic to abortion access, which Warnock has seized on in his campaign ads. One features a clip of Walker claiming to know a miracle cure for Covid, which he does not specifically name. “I have something that can bring you into a building that would clean you from Covid as you walk through this dry mist. As you walk through the door it will kill any Covid on your body,” Walker says in the clip.“You hear [Walker] talk sometimes, and it’s just word salad,” said Jacquelyn Bettadapur, chair of the Cobb County Democratic Committee. “He doesn’t have the oratory skills. He doesn’t have the positions. He can’t even express himself coherently.”Walker’s controversies and gaffes have also offered Democrats plenty of fodder. His ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, has claimed he threatened to kill her. (Walker has said he was dealing with mental health issues at the time, but he has not denied the allegation.) Walker has three children from non-marital relationships, and he did not publicly acknowledge them until reports about them emerged. (Walker has said he supports all his children and “chose not to use them as props to win a political campaign”.) He claimed to have previously worked in law enforcement. (He did not, although his campaign asserted he was an honorary deputy in Cobb county.) Walker once boasted that he graduated in the top 1% of his class from the University of Georgia. (He never got his degree.) A New York Times investigation raised questions about whether Walker’s food-distribution company had spread false information about donating some of its profits to charity.Most recently, and perhaps most damning of all for a candidate who has campaigned strongly against abortion, Walker now stands accused by a former girlfriend of paying for her to get an abortion in 2009. He has denied the reports. His son, also a vocal conservative, blasted his father on social media, calling him a hypocrite and a liar.And yet, despite Walker’s vulnerabilities, most recent polls indicate that he and Warnock are running neck and neck. The race could prove even more difficult than Warnock’s last contest, given the national headwinds facing all Democratic candidates: in addition to widespread complaints about rising prices, Biden’s approval rating has been underwater for more than a year.“At the end of the day, a lot of this is a nationalized election, and it’s much more about what the Democrats have done over these last two years when they’ve been in control versus what Herschel Walker may have done in the past,” said Jay Williams, a longtime Republican strategist based in the Atlanta area. “You could put a potted plant against Warnock, or you could put a potted plant against Walker, and all the Democrats would vote for the potted plant or all the Republicans would vote for the potted plant. It’s really that kind of election.”Walker’s supporters have echoed that stance, saying party identity is enough to guarantee their vote. “I like him because he’s a Republican. That’s all I need to know,” Bill McCain, a 78-year-old voter from Lindale, said at the Rome rally after grabbing one of Walker’s lawn signs.Warnock is clearly aware that he has a real race on his hands, and he has been fundraising aggressively. In the second quarter of 2022 Warnock raised $17m, bringing his campaign’s total haul to more than $70m. In comparison, Walker raised just $6.2m over the same three months, and Warnock’s cash advantage has allowed him to dominate the Georgia airwaves.The forthcoming debate, scheduled for 14 October in Savannah, could provide Warnock with another opportunity to draw a clear contrast between him and Walker. The two candidates jostled for months over the debate schedule, and Warnock accused Walker of being “scared for voters to hear what he has to say”. Even Walker’s allies acknowledge he will be at a disadvantage on stage.“Clearly Warnock is a much more seasoned speaker, much more eloquent,” Williams said. “If I were [Walker], I’d just stay on message, stay focused on what is his campaign plan and what is the difference between him and Warnock.”One of Warnock’s tasks in the debate will be to motivate Democratic base voters, including African Americans, to turn out in November, and Gillespie argued that questions about race-related issues could help him in that regard. Warnock and Walker are both Black men but their approaches to discussing race are notably distinct.While Warnock has directly confronted the ways in which African Americans are uniquely impacted by federal policy decisions, Walker has instead attacked his opponent for raising the issue at all. “Senator Warnock believes America is a bad country full of racist people,” Walker said in an ad released last month. “I believe we’re a great country full of generous people.”Walker may have appealed to Republican leaders in part because they hoped he could neutralize potential allegations of racism against Warnock, Gillespie said. But Walker’s approach to the topic of race may not sit well with other African Americans, who make up about a third of Georgia’s population.“Walker has a history of avoiding and deflecting on topics related to race. I think that’s going to be off-putting to African American voters,” Gillespie said. “The question is whether or not Warnock can use that to mobilize Black voters to make sure that they turn out at the highest rate possible.”Gillespie conceded that the debate is unlikely to sway many voters, but said it could make a critical difference for the small swath of Georgians still trying to make up their minds. In the rapidly shifting political landscape of Georgia, once a reliably Republican state and now a hotly contested battleground, Warnock’s fate will probably be decided by a handful of points.“We just have to accept that Georgia is going to be an electorally competitive state,” Gillespie said. “What that means, regardless of who wins, is that we’re in the era of narrow margins.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022GeorgiaUS politicsDemocratsfeaturesReuse this content More

US court orders review of landmark immigration program for DreamersDaca is expected to go to the US supreme court for a third time A ruling by a US appeals court has again thrown into question the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program, which prevents the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought into the United States as children.The fifth US circuit court of appeals decided on Wednesday that a federal district judge in Texas who last year declared Daca illegal, should take another look at the program, following revisions the Biden administration adopted in August.The Texas judge, Andrew Hanen, had found that the program had not been subjected to public notice and comment periods required under the federal administrative procedures act. But he left the program temporarily intact for those already benefiting from it, pending the appeal.Wednesday’s ruling by three judges of the New Orleans-based fifth circuit upholds the judge’s initial finding. But it sends the case back to him for a look at a new version of the rule issued by the Biden administration in late August. The new rule takes effect 31 October.“A district court is in the best position to review the administrative record in the rule-making proceeding,” said the opinion by chief fifth circuit judge Priscilla Richman, nominated to the court by President George W Bush. The other panel members were judges Kurt Engelhardt and James Ho, both appointees of President Donald Trump.“It appears that the status quo for Daca remains,” said Veronica Garcia, an attorney for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, an advocacy organization.Daca was adopted by former President Barack Obama’s administration and has had a complicated ride through federal court challenges. The new rules by the Biden administration are largely technical and represent little substantive change from the 2012 memo that created Daca, but it was subject to public comments as part of a formal rule-making process intended to improve its chances of surviving legal muster.In July arguments at the fifth circuit, the US justice department defended the program, allied with the state of New Jersey, immigrant advocacy organizations and a coalition of dozens of powerful corporations, including Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft.They argued that Daca recipients have grown up to become productive drivers of the US economy, holding and creating jobs and spending money.Texas, joined by eight other Republican-leaning states argued that they are harmed financially, incurring hundreds of millions of dollars in healthcare, education and other costs, when immigrants are allowed to remain in the country illegally. They also argued that the White House overstepped its authority by granting immigration benefits that are for Congress to decide.Daca is widely expected to go to the supreme court for a third time. In 2016, the supreme court deadlocked 4-4 over an expanded Daca and a version of the program for parents of Daca recipients, keeping in place a lower court decision for the benefits to be blocked. In 2020, the high court ruled 5-4 that the Trump administration improperly ended Daca by failing to follow federal procedures, allowing it to stay in place.Daca recipients have become a powerful political force even though they can’t vote, but their efforts to achieve a path to citizenship through Congress have repeatedly fallen short. Any imminent threat to lose work authorization and to expose themselves to deportation could pressure Congress into protecting them, even as a stopgap measure.The Biden administration disappointed some pro-Daca advocates with its conservative legal strategy of keeping age eligibility unchanged. Daca recipients had to have been in the United States in June 2007, an increasingly out-of-reach requirement. The average age of a Daca recipient was 28.2 years at the end of March, compared to 23.8 years in September 2017.There were 611,270 people enrolled in Daca at the end of March, including 494,350, or 81%, from Mexico and large numbers from Guatemala, Honduras, Peru and South Korea. TopicsDream ActUS immigrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

A US appeals court on Wednesday granted the justice department’s request to expedite its appeal of a lower court order appointing a special master to review records the FBI seized from former president Donald Trump’s Florida estate in August.The decision by the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit to fast-track the government’s appeal represents a setback for Trump, who had opposed the request, Reuters reports.Last week, the Department of Justice (DoJ) had asked the 11th circuit to address concerns it still has with US district judge Aileen Cannon’s appointment of senior judge Raymond Dearie, who is tasked with reviewing more than 11,000 records the FBI found inside Mar-a-Lago, in order to weed out anything that may be privileged.Cannon’s order blocks the justice department from relying on those records for its ongoing criminal investigation until Dearie’s review is complete.In its filing, the justice department said this prohibition is hampering its investigation, and that it needs to be able to examine non-classified records that may have been stored in close proximity to classified ones.Those non-classified records, the department said, “may shed light” on how the documents were transferred to, or stored at, the Mar-a-Lago estate, and who might have accessed them.Separately, yesterday, Trump asked the US supreme court to partially reverse an appellate court decision that prevented the special master, reviewing the seized materials for privilege protections, from examining 100 documents with classification markings.Joe Biden traveled to Florida to survey the destruction wrought by Hurricane Ian alongside Republican governor and White House critic, Ron DeSantis, with whom a temporary political truce had been declared. But bad news came from abroad, when the Opec+ grouping of oil producers agreed to slash production, potentially driving gas prices higher just as American voters cast ballots in the midterms.Here’s more about what happened today:
The Opec+ production cut comes as the oil cartel’s leader Saudi Arabia appears to be cultivating warmer ties with Russia, in spite of Riyadh’s alliances with many western countries.
Gas prices may indeed rise, but not necessarily by a huge amount.
The justice department won yet another legal battle over the Mar-a-Lago documents, though the case is far from over.
One of the unanswered questions of the January 6 insurrection was whether senator Ron Johnson, a conservative Republican representing Wisconsin, was involved in the plot to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s win.In the fourth hearing of the congressional committee investigating the attack held in June, it was revealed that a staff member for the senator contacted vice-president Mike Pence’s legislative affairs director, asking how to get fake slates of electors from Johnson to Pence, who was to preside over the certification of Biden’s election victory that day. The documents never got to the vice-president, but the January 6 committee detailed the attempt during a hearing dedicated to exploring the legal efforts made by Donald Trump’s allies to interfere with Biden taking office.NBC News reports that Johnson told his side of the story during an appearance in Wisconsin on Tuesday, where he’s in a tough re-election battle against Democrat Mandela Barnes. Here’s what he had to say:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Of the electors scheme, Johnson said he communicated with Jim Troupis, a Wisconsin-based attorney who led legal efforts for Donald Trump in a recount of the state’s 2020 results.
“What would you do if you got a text from the attorney for the president of the United States?” Johnson said. “You respond to it.
“I got a text from the president’s lawyer asking if we could deliver something to the vice president and if I could have a staff member handle it,” Johnson said. Asked whether he knew what it was he was being asked to deliver, he said: “No. I had no idea.”
Johnson said he turned it over to his chief of staff, who was new at the time. “Next thing I know he’s letting me know the vice president’s not accepting anything, so I just texted back ‘no, we’re not delivering it,’ end of story. Nothing happened. I had no idea there were even an alternate slate of electors.”Trump campaign knew ‘fake electors’ scheme was fraudulent, panel arguesRead moreThat Biden even brought up climate change is bound to infuriate some Republican elected officials and conservative commentators, who see any mention of the scientific reality as cover for a wider liberal agenda.DeSantis may be among them. “What I’ve found is, people when they start talking about things like global warming, they typically use that as a pretext to do a bunch of left-wing things that they would want to do anyways. We’re not doing any left-wing stuff,” the governor said at a speech last year, according to Florida Phoenix. DeSantis has grown popular among Republicans for standing up to Democrats and their perceived ideologies, and those comments may be seen as a classic example of his success. But as governor, DeSantis has backed some efforts to help his famously low-lying state deal with the climate crisis. Last year, he signed a bill to strengthen Florida’s resiliency against sea level rise, and has also publicly uttered the words “climate change” – a break from his Republican predecessor Rick Scott, who reportedly banned some state employees from using the terms. More

Anti-abortion extremist Herschel Walker is a raging hypocrite. Surprised?Arwa MahdawiWalker would hardly be the first Republican to think abortion is ‘OK for me, evil for thee’ Herschel Walker is a former NFL football player turned Republican candidate who is running for a crucial Senate seat in Georgia and has extremely hardline views on abortion. He supports a ban on the procedure with no exceptions for rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is in danger – circumstances he describes as “excuses”. He has also repeatedly likened abortion to murder.All of that is somewhat awkward because it turns out that, by Herschel’s own definition, he may be an accessory to murder and should probably hand himself into the police immediately, if recent allegations are to be believed. On Monday the Daily Beast reported that Walker allegedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion in 2009. The woman, who has asked to remain anonymous, provided the outlet with evidence supporting her claims, including a $575 receipt from the abortion clinic, an image of a signed personal check for $700 from Walker, and a “get well” card allegedly signed by Walker. The card had “a drawing of a steaming cup of tea” on the front and instructed the recipient to “Rest, Relax, Recover.”It doesn’t seem that Walker has done much relaxing since the news that he is (allegedly) a raging hypocrite broke. The Senate hopeful had a meltdown on Twitter on Monday, calling the Daily Beast’s report “a flatout lie” and “Democrat attack”. He also said he would be suing the media outlet for this “defamatory lie …tomorrow [Tuesday] morning.” He doesn’t appear to have followed through with his threat of a lawsuit, however. Perhaps – and I’m just speculating here – he looked up the definition of defamation and realised he had to prove the statement was actually false.Herschel’s adult son, Christian, who is a conservative influencer, certainly doesn’t seem to be buying the idea that the Daily Beast published “a flatout lie”. On Monday night Christian went on a Twitter tirade berating his father. “I know my mom and I would really appreciate if my father Herschel Walker stopped lying and making a mockery of us,” Christian tweeted. “You’re not a ‘family man’ when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence … I don’t care about someone who has a bad past and takes accountability. But how DARE YOU LIE and act as though you’re some ‘moral, Christian, upright man.’ You’ve lived a life of DESTROYING other peoples lives. How dare you.”Christian wasn’t done there. In a video he posted to Twitter he railed against the fact his father “has four kids, four different women, wasn’t in the house raising one of them. He was out having sex with other women.”If you haven’t been keeping up with the constant Walker scandals and are wondering what on earth Christian is talking about, I suggest you sit down for a second – Walker Sr has quite the past. In 2005, for example, Cindy Grossman, Walker’s ex-wife, secured a protective order against him, citing violent behavior. Grossman told ABC News that Walker once pointed a gun at her head and said, “I’m going to blow your f’ing brains out.” Walker also reportedly threatened to kill Grossman, Grossman’s friend and his therapist in a therapy session. In addition, Grossman’s sister said in an affidavit that Walker had “stated unequivocally that he was going to shoot my sister Cindy and her boyfriend in the head.” Walker hasn’t denied these events but says he can’t remember them, insinuating that they may be linked to the fact he suffers from dissociative identity disorder.Grossman isn’t the only woman to accuse Walker of violence. One of his ex-girlfriend’s told police in 2012 that Walker threated to “blow her head off” when she tried to end a relationship with him. Walker has denied these allegations.When Walker isn’t (allegedly!) threatening women, he seems to be impregnating them. Earlier this year it transpired that the Republican, who has been a vocal critic of absentee fathers, had a number of secret children he has never acknowledged. He would, of course, have even more secret children if he hadn’t allegedly paid his mistress to have an abortion. Something, let’s not forget, that he thinks is inexcusable and evil – unless he does it.Everyone is entitled to make mistakes. Everyone is entitled to a less-than-perfect past. But I don’t think I’m being unreasonable here when I say that a history of domestic violence allegations, a bunch of secret children, and several examples of being a raging hypocrite and shameless liar ought to preclude you from a political career. It certainly ought to preclude you from having any right to preach at people about morality or family values.So will the new revelations about Walker sink his political aspirations? Sadly, I doubt it. Walker, after all, is hardly the first Republican to have shown himself to be a raging hypocrite. Indeed, it’s almost a job requirement. He’s certainly not the only Republican whose stance on abortions can be summed up as: OK for me, evil for thee. There are a number of anti-abortion zealots who have been outed as having encouraged the women in their life to get abortions. It’s almost like Republicans don’t actually have a consistent moral compass, they just want to control women.Indeed, there is already ample evidence that Republicans seem unbothered by Walker’s past: following the Daily Beast’s revelations party representatives closed ranks behind their embattled candidate. Donald Trump himself stepped in to claim that Walker is being maligned by the “Fake News Media”. Meanwhile Steven Law, the president of the Senate Leadership Fund, proclaimed: “This election is about the future of the country. Herschel Walker will make things better; Raphael Warnock [the Democrat he is standing against] is making it worse. Anything else is a distraction.”Law’s words sum up Republican strategy perfectly. At the moment they think Walker will be useful, so they don’t care what he’s done. Hell, they would elect Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy into a Senate seat if they thought they could help advance their agenda. Republicans like to preach about family values but time and time again they demonstrate that the only thing they care about is gaining power. Anything else is a distraction.Meanwhile Dana Loesch, a conservative commentator and the former spokesperson for the National Rifle Association, didn’t even bother trying to put a spin on Walker’s actions. After calling women who have abortions “skanks”, she just flat-out said the only thing she cares about is Republicans gaining power. “Winning is a virtue,” Loesch proclaimed. “I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate.”
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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James Brown’s cape and Rudy gone wild: key takeaways from Haberman’s Trump bookThe former president really doesn’t like Mitch McConnell – and other notable things we’ve learned from Confidence Man Maggie Haberman’s new book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, was published in the US on Tuesday. As is now customary for books about the 45th president, its revelations have been widely reported.‘She say anything about me?’ Trump raised Ghislaine Maxwell link with aidesRead moreBut thanks to the New York Times reporter’s dominance of the Trump beat – before his time in power, through it and after – the intensity of interest has perhaps outweighed that for any other such book.Here are the key takeaways.Trump’s Waterloo?Trump was long said to be in the habit of ripping up notes from White House meetings and throwing them in the toilet. Haberman published photos. Trump is also in all sorts of legal trouble for taking classified material to Mar-a-Lago, prompting an FBI search. He admitted such to Haberman – perhaps as a result of his comfort talking to a reporter he called “my psychiatrist”. She also shows him being cavalier with national security concerns regarding Iran and Russia.Jared who?Haberman shows Trump relentlessly mocking Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and adviser, for his voice and manner; wishing Ivanka had married the NFL star Tom Brady instead; deciding to fire both of them then chickening out; ranting about Kushner’s Jewish religious observance; and predicting that Kushner would be attacked, even raped, were he ever to choose to go camping. Kushner, meanwhile, is shown as a White House turf warrior who gloried in having “cut [Steve] Bannon’s balls off” – as the Guardian’s Lloyd Green pointed out, they grew back – and tried to inflate poll numbers so as not to anger his father-in-law.Ghislaine Maxwell was a worryTrump fell out with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and denies wrongdoing associated with him – but nonetheless worried aloud that Epstein’s former girlfriend might talk about him after her own arrest. Trump, who denies allegations of sexual misconduct or assault from more than 20 accusers, also predicted that “the women” would be the source of most trouble once he entered politics. Melania Trump seems to have agreed – Haberman says she renegotiated her prenuptial agreement.Trump was racist and transphobicHaberman’s reporting here is not particularly surprising but it is routinely horrific. Trump thought Black political staffers were waiters. He said he couldn’t afford to alienate white supremacists, because they tended to vote. He persisted in asking if a notional transgender debate questioner was “cocked or de-cocked”.He was also dangerously ignorantWrong-footed by a health official’s uniform, Trump thought the confused apparatchik could organise bombing raids on drug labs in Mexico. “The response from White House aides,” Haberman writes, “was not to try to change Trump’s view, but to consider asking [Adm Brett] Giroir not to wear his uniform to the Oval Office anymore.”Taxes dodge was made up on the flyTrump pulled his “I can’t, I’m being audited” excuse for not releasing his tax returns out of thin air on his campaign plane – and rolled it out to reporters apparently without legal advice. Those who knew Trump in New York pre-politics suspected his returns would show he wasn’t as rich as he said. Haberman also reports alleged dodgy practices including a parking garage lease payment made with a box of gold bars.Trump was no diplomatAmong multiple diplomatic faux pas, Haberman shows Trump asking Theresa May why her mortal rival Boris Johnson wasn’t prime minister instead and speaking crudely about abortion, and calling the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, “that bitch”. Trump’s apparent affinity with or interest in Nazi Germany – widely reported but now at issue in a lawsuit against CNN – contributed to one chief of staff, John Kelly, deciding the president was a fascist years before Joe Biden said the same. In terms of delicate domestic situations, Haberman shows Trump sarcastically praying for the health of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the liberal supreme court justice who died in late 2020.Trump hates MitchTrump’s disdain for the Senate minority leader is no secret, but he gave it pungent expression in interviews with Haberman. McConnell said Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the Capitol attack, though he voted to acquit at Trump’s second impeachment trial. Trump told Haberman: “The Old Crow’s a piece of shit.”Foiled Covid Superman stunt was inspired by James BrownThis bit is as weird as the subhead suggests. Haberman recounts familiar aspects of Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic but also thickens out the tale of how Trump wanted to present his own recovery. She writes: “He came up with a plan he told associates was inspired by the singer James Brown, whom he loved watching toss off his cape while onstage, but it was in line with his love of professional wrestling as well. [Trump] would be wheeled out of Walter Reed in a chair … dramatically stand up, then open his button-down dress shirt to reveal [a] Superman logo beneath it. (Trump was so serious about it that he … instruct[ed] an aide, Max Miller, to procure the Superman shirts; Miller was sent to a Virginia big-box store.)”Capitol attack officer Fanone hits out at ‘weasel’ McCarthy in startling interviewRead moreTrump wanted to refuse to leaveTrump denied to Haberman that he spent most of 6 January watching the Capitol attack on TV and refusing to stop it, as congressional witnesses have described. Slightly more surprisingly, Haberman reports that Trump told aides – including the guy who brought the Diet Cokes – he simply wouldn’t cede power. In his quasi-legalistic efforts to overturn the 2020 election, he also told his personal attorney: “OK, Rudy, you’re in charge. Go wild, do anything you want. I don’t care.” Giuliani proceeded to go wild.Some aides tried to rein Trump inHaberman says William Barr, Trump’s second attorney general, told his president: “People are tired of the fucking drama.” But it seems the publishing industry is not – Haberman has followed Baker and Glasser, Woodward and Costa, Rucker and Leonnig and many, many other authors to the top of the bestseller charts.TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsRepublicansPolitics booksNew York TimesfeaturesReuse this content More