US Politics

AnalysisDeSantis actions on migrants is ‘mini-ethnic cleansing’, expert warnsStephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington Philosophy professor says treating Republican’s decision to move unwitting migrants to Martha’s Vineyard as a political stunt risks diminishing its ‘moral seriousness’Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s decision to move unwitting migrants to Martha’s Vineyard last week has been compared to a “mini-ethnic cleansing with genocidal precedence” by a philosopher who has closely studied dehumanization and its role in genocide and the Holocaust.“Of course this is not genocide, but it is somewhat reminiscent of awful things that have happened in the past. As soon as you start treating human beings as undesirable problems to dump on others, you are in very dangerous territory,” said David Livingstone Smith, a professor of philosophy at the University of New England.“What frightens me most actually is that someone who does these sort of acts is capable of doing much worse,” he said.The remarks by Smith, who is the author of Making Monsters: The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization, come as dozens of more people, many of whom are migrants who are believed to have come from Venezuela, arrived in Washington DC on Saturday morning after being bused from Texas. The migrants, including a one-month-old baby, were dropped in front of the Naval Observatory, where Vice-President Kamala Harris resides.The shuttling of about 50 migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard – with a stop in Florida – last week has been condemned by US president Joe Biden and human rights groups after it emerged that the migrants were misled and told they were being sent to Boston to find jobs and opportunities. Lawyers for the individuals have called on state officials in Massachusetts to investigate the incident, including the circumstances around the two charter flights that transported them to the Massachusetts island, which were arranged by DeSantis.The Florida Republican, who is expected to run for the Republican party’s presidential nomination in 2024, has claimed that “every community in America should be sharing in the burdens” of migrants and that he was seeking to draw attention to the Biden administration’s handling of immigration issues between the US and Mexico.But Smith warned that seeing the incident as merely a political “stunt” by an attention-seeking Republican politician risked diminishing the “moral seriousness and the possible future implications of what they are doing”.“In effect,” Smith said, “DeSantis is intimating that this is an ethnic cleansing operations, that he will take these so-called undesirables and pick them up and dump them in the lands of [his] political enemies.”Stone said he was also struck by the way in which both DeSantis and Texas governor Greg Abbott appeared to see liberal American cities like Washington DC or the wealthy liberal enclave of Martha’s Vineyard as being like a foreign country.“You could say that’s no surprise: there’s often talk of ‘real Americans’ living in the heartland. But this takes it to a new level. To use a gross but apt analogy, it’s as if someone is taking their garbage and dumping it in their neighbors’ yard. DeSantis talks about it like that,” he said.Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host who regularly engages in racist diatribes on his show, raised the idea of dropping migrants on Martha’s Vineyard in this summer. In a segment that aired on 26 July, he suggested sending “huge numbers” of migrants to the Massachusetts island, which he claimed must be “begging for diversity” since its major city was overwhelmingly white.“Let’s start with 300,000 and move up from there,” Carlson said.Fox News spokesperson Irena Briganti did not respond to questions about whether Carlson had discussed the issue with DeSantis directly or whether Fox had any concerns about Carlson encouraging human trafficking.Carlson has also praised authoritarian leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who argued in a speech earlier this year that Europeans should not become “peoples of mixed race”.TopicsUS immigrationRon DeSantisUS politicsRepublicansanalysisReuse this content More

Proud Boys memo reveals meticulous planning for ‘street-level violence’ Document of 23 pages shows the lengths to which the far-right group goes to prepare for potentially violent encounters and exposes the militaristic structure and language it has adoptedThe document is so dowdy and formal it resembles the annual minutes of a society of tax accountants. Its index lists sections on “objectives” and “rules of engagement” and carries an “addendum” that provides recommendations for hotels and parking.On the cover, two words give a clue to the notoriety of the group that produced it: “MAGA” and “WARNING”. That and the date: 5 January 2021, the day before the US Capitol attack.Proud Boys developed plans to take over government buildings in Washington DCRead moreWhat goes unsaid on the cover and is barely mentioned throughout the 23 pages is that this is the work of one of the most violent political gangs in America, the far-right street fighters who Donald Trump told to “stand back and stand by”: the Proud Boys.The document, published by the Guardian for the first time, gives a very rare insight into the meticulous planning that goes into events staged by the far-right club.The Proud Boys have been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and are alleged to have acted as key organizers of the violent assault on the Capitol.In the wake of January 6, which has been linked to the deaths of nine people, the New York march featured in the document was called off and the strategy so fastidiously laid out was never implemented. But the document remains sharply revealing.It shows the lengths to which the Proud Boys go to prepare for potentially violent encounters and then to cover their tracks – something prosecutors have stressed but that has never been seen in the group’s own words. It exposes the militaristic structure and language the Proud Boys have adopted, and their aspiration to become the frontline vigilante force in a Trump-led America.It also provides clues as to how the group continues to spread its tentacles throughout the US despite the fact that many of its top leaders, including its national chairman, Enrique Tarrio, are behind bars awaiting trial on charges of seditious conspiracy.The purpose of the document is to provide a “strategic security plan” and call to action, summoning Proud Boys members to a pro-Trump Maga march that was scheduled for New York City on 10 January 2021. That was four days after Congress was to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election – the occasion that would be targeted by the fatal insurrection.The document was obtained from a Proud Boys member by the extremism reporter Andy Campbell as he researched his new book, We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered in a New Era of American Extremism. The book will be published on Tuesday. Campbell shared the document with the Guardian.The author of the document is Randy Ireland, who as president of the group’s New York branch, the Hell’s Gate Bridge Chapter, is one of the most prominent Proud Boys in the US north-east. The paper was circulated through Telegram, the encrypted chat app widely used by the Proud Boys as an organizing tool, to at least nine other chapters in New York and beyond.Campbell told the Guardian the decentralized structure of the group, into what it claims are 157 active chapters in all but three states, is one of the Proud Boys’ greatest strengths, as reflected in the autonomous nature of the New York planning.“Chapter leaders like Randy can create their own events, run independently of each other,” Campbell said. “Enrique Tarrio and other leaders are in prison, but these guys are going to continue what they are doing.”‘We will not disappoint’The language in the planning paper is overtly militaristic. Ireland designates himself “General of Security Detail”, while his underlings in the chain of command are “VPs” of “Recruiting”, “Scout Security” and “Team Leads”.The plan is for 60 or so Proud Boys at the 10 January event in Manhattan to be corralled into seven “tactical teams” of five to eight men each (they are all men, as one of the overriding values of the group is misogyny). Members are told to bring protective gear, including “knife/stab protection, helmets, gloves, boots etc” and to make use of radio channels, walkie-talkies or Telegram to communicate with each other.They are to stick together in groups and under no circumstances allow “Normies” – ordinary Trump supporters who are not Proud Boys – or “Females” into their ranks.“Their presence will jeopardise the health and safety of all those involved with Security, and simply cannot be allowed to happen!” Ireland writes.Maps reproduced at the back of the document show positions “scouts” and “tactical teams” should adopt at key points along the route of the march, which was planned to start at Columbus Circle and pass Trump Tower.“That spot is understood in a very public way to hold special meaning for us,” the paper says, referring to Trump’s home on Fifth Avenue. “WE WILL NOT DISAPPOINT!”Campbell, who has been reporting on the Proud Boys since they started turning up at Trump rallies in early 2017, describes them as America’s most notorious political fight club. In the planning paper, he sees equal parts fantasy and danger.“These guys see themselves as super soldiers, like some sort of military outfit,” he said. “On one level it’s funny, as nothing is in fact going to pan out the way they say it will. But on another level, it’s alarming because it shows how much thought they put into this stuff.”In We Are Proud Boys, Campbell traces the group from its birth in 2015-16 through to its central role on January 6 when a member, Dominic Pezzola, became the first person to breach the US Capitol. At least 30 Proud Boys have been charged in relation to the insurrection, including Tarrio and four others accused of seditious conspiracy – among the most serious indictments yet handed down.The group was invented by the British-born founder of Vice magazine, Gavin McInnes, who branded himself a “western chauvinist” and peddled in bigotry. McInnes floated the Proud Boys name on his online chatshow in May 2016, introducing them as a “gang” and inventing a uniform, a black Fred Perry polo shirt with yellow trim.McInnes was careful to brand his creation as harmless fun, a satirical male-only patriotic drinking club that later attached itself to all things Trump. But Campbell argues that from the outset political violence was baked in.A Proud Boy was an organizer of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, during which an anti-fascist protester was murdered. The group has held violent gatherings in Portland, Oregon. Outside a Republican event in New York in 2018, several members were arrested and charged with felonious assault.‘Street-level violence’Proud Boys membership is structured into four ranks, known as “degrees”, the fourth granted once you “get arrested or get in a serious violent fight for the cause”, as McInnes himself explained. In an interview with Campbell for the book, McInnes denied promoting violence and insisted the Proud Boys were never proactively aggressive, only reacting to leftwing attacks.That official line is reiterated in the document published by the Guardian. Ireland is careful to portray the Proud Boys as a defensive group.He writes: “If any violence does spout off, all Proud Boys are expected to respond immediately – only so far as to eliminate and end that threat to them or others. VERY IMPORTANT: Once the threat has been neutralized, WE STOP!”But there is a glaring contradiction: Ireland presents his chapter as a non-violent organization yet it goes out seeking violence. He assigns the group, uninvited, the role of a vigilante police force.“We are there as the first line of defense for all event attendees,” he writes, then contradicts himself by saying the only role of the Proud Boys is to play a “back-up role” to law enforcement and to “force them to do their jobs”.That speaks volumes. It carries the implication that if the police will not assail anti-fascist protesters, Proud Boys will.“I’ve reported at Proud Boys events where they stood back and relaxed as police lobbed teargas and other munitions into the crowd of counter-protesters,” Campbell said. “Then the Proud Boys didn’t have to do what Randy Ireland is hinting at here – step in and do the fighting themselves.”For Campbell, the most disturbing aspect of the document is that, with its soft-lensed double-talk and contradictory meanings, it falls into arguably the main ambition of the Proud Boys: the normalization of political violence. Despite having so many leaders behind bars, the group is prospering.As new chapters pop up, Americans are increasingly inured to the idea of heavily armed gangs in public settings. Proud Boys have posed as “security details” at anti-abortion rallies, anti-vaccination demonstrations, pro-gun protests and of course Trump rallies.“The street-level violence the Proud Boys helped to create is now being carried out by regular people,” Campbell said. “You saw it on January 6, you see it at Planned Parenthood and LGBTQ+ events where people are harassed and attacked by everyday Americans.”TopicsThe far rightUS politicsPolitics booksfeaturesReuse this content More

Iran president rules out meeting with Biden, saying it won’t be beneficialEbrahim Raisi says he sees no ‘changes in reality’ from Trump administration as hopes to revive nuclear talks dampen Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, has ruled out a meeting with Joe Biden on the margins of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) this week, saying he saw no “changes in reality” from the Trump administration.Raisi underlined the firm position of his government and dampened hopes that a week of summitry at UNGA in New York might yield any progress in negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. Washington has rejected the latest Iranian bargaining positive as “not constructive”, and most observers believe there will be no breakthroughs at least until after the US congressional elections in November.Asked on the CBS 60 Minutes news programme whenever he would be ready to meet Biden in New York, Raisi replied: “No. I don’t think that such a meeting would happen. I don’t believe having a meeting or a talk with him will be beneficial.”Raisi and Biden are both expected to address UNGA on Wednesday morning.On comparisons between the Biden administration, which has reentered talks on restoring the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Programme of Action (JCPOA) and the Trump White House, which withdrew the US from the deal in 2018, triggering its subsequent unraveling, Raisi was blunt.“The new administration in the US, they claim that they are different from the Trump’s administration. They have said it in their messages to us. But we haven’t witnessed any changes in reality,” he said, in an interview due to be broadcast on Sunday evening.Efforts to restore the JCPOA, by which Iran severely restricted its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief, have stalled in part because Iran is seeking guarantees that any agreement is not reversed by Biden’s successor, which could be Trump himself.Raisi will arrive in New York in a week the regime’s human rights record is under particular scrutiny. Thirty Iranians have been injured, some seriously, in protests after the death of Mahsa Amini a 22-year-old Kurdish woman three days after she was arrested and reportedly beaten by morality police in Tehran.TopicsIranUS foreign policyMiddle East and north AfricaUS politicsJoe BidenBiden administrationTrump administrationnewsReuse this content More

‘I can’t stay silent’: Roe reversal powers new generation to sign up and vote Huge bloc of women expected to turn out in November midterms to protect abortion rights – could it alter the election outcome?Sonya Koenig is scared. A 19-year-old student from Kalamazoo, Michigan, Koenig often stays up until 2am thinking. Sometimes she paces up and down the hall, or speaks to her roommate about nightmare scenarios in which she ends up pregnant and in need of an abortion.“Being in college, I hear stories all the time of women getting drugged at parties, or just walking down the street, and something unfortunate can happen,” says Koenig, a freshman at Michigan State University. “A guy can walk away, but [these abortion bans] mean the woman has to choose: ‘Do I want to give this baby up … or raise this child with no help from anybody?’ That’s a really hard decision.”In August, a week after her 19th birthday, Koenig signed up to vote. She is one of many women registering in droves since the supreme court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion on 24 June.“My brain is constantly on fire. I can’t relax. I just want this election to be over with,” says Koenig, who plans to vote to protect abortion rights in a Michigan ballot as well as voting Democrat come November.People such as Koenig threaten to be a hugely pivotal voting bloc as the midterms loom, with organizers focusing on women and young people in voter registration drives all over the country. The first hints of that bloc’s voting power came in early August, when women in Kansas came out overwhelmingly to protect abortion rights. That election saw huge turnout, with women representing 70% of newly registered voters. They ultimately protected abortion rights in a state where Donald Trump had a 15% lead in the 2020 presidential election that he lost to Joe Biden.That trend seems to be continuing in other states – a threat to Republican lawmakers, who in recent weeks have quietly removed abortion-related election pledges from their websites and softened their anti-abortion messaging.For instance, the Republican gubernatorial candidate for Minnesota, Scott Jensen, had previously said he would ban abortion outright. But more recently, Jensen released a video saying he supports abortion in the cases of rape, incest, and threat to life of the pregnant person.That pivot might not be enough to hide the party’s hardline agenda: this week, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina proposed a nationwide ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, despite months of Republican rhetoric about putting the question back to the states. Perhaps women are unconvinced. Target Smart analyzed new voter registration from 45 states following the supreme court decision that reversed federal abortion rights – the group said female registration shot up 12%.In Wisconsin, a battleground state that voted for Biden by a margin of just 30,000 votes in 2020, women are out-registering men by 16%. New registrants also skew hugely Democratic: 52% of newly registered voters in Wisconsin, compared to just 17% of new registrations by Republicans.“In my 28 years of analyzing elections, I had never seen anything like what’s happened in the past two months in American politics,” Tom Bonier, chief executive of Target Smart, wrote in the New York Times. “Women are registering to vote in numbers I never witnessed before. I’ve run out of superlatives to describe how different this moment is.”This week, the Michigan supreme court agreed to put the question of abortion rights directly to voters in November, after 730,000 Michiganders signed a petition requesting a vote. Initially, Republicans on the state’s board of canvassers tried to block the call for a referendum, complaining about spacing errors.“I tend to do the bigger elections … I’m disabled, and standing in line for a long time is not the best for me,” says Diamond Doré, 30, from Detroit. “But seeing [the supreme court] decision, I was like, I have to vote. I’m Black and queer, and I know this means a lot of Black women are gonna die. I couldn’t stay silent.”A grassroots activist, Doré phone canvasses, and says she has seen anti-abortion voters suddenly wanting to protect abortion. “When this happened, a lot of people sat back and said, ‘Oh, dang, this is for real. It’s not just about me, this is about tons of other women and pregnant persons around America,’” says Doré.News of a 10-year-old girl from Ohio traveling 200 miles to Indiana to get abortion care after being raped was one thing Doré has seen sway voters. Add to that list people being forced to carry unsuccessful pregnancies to full term, at risk to their own lives, and the threat of criminalization.“A lot of Black people feel like we are going back to what our ancestors went through,” says Doré.William Wojciechowsk, 35, who hails from what he calls “Trump country, Michigan” (St Clair), says abortion bans across the country mean he will be voting Democrat in November for the first time.“All the way up until the last primary election, I voted very conservatively. But I’m a transgender male, and abortions can affect me directly because I haven’t had a hysterectomy.”Asked if he felt abandoned by his party, Wojciechowsk responded: “They’re too extreme. They’re out of their minds. These bans are putting women and trans men back into the dark ages.”Bonier says the gender gap in voter registration seems more pronounced in some states than others.“There’s a general sense that even though Dobbs fell, that [some of the electorate still feels] abortion is protected. In states like Oregon, where they’ve been trying to protect abortion in their state constitution, you don’t really see gender gaps [in those registering to vote] since the decision,” says Bonier. But in Republican-dominated states such as Alaska, Idaho, Kansas and Louisiana, and competitive midwestern swing states – such as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan – the gap is clearer, he says.“[In those] races, governors and senators have certainly focused pretty extensively on [abortion]. And so I think voters generally have a sense of the stakes.”Those stakes include control of Congress at a pivotal moment for American democracy – control that until recently looked like it could pass into Republican hands. The party in power has historically tended to struggle in the midterms.“Just a few months ago, if you were to watch any of the cable news shows or read any of the political columnists, there seemed to be a universal agreement that Republicans were on their way to an inevitable wave election, where they were going to take back the Senate and take back the House. Now that doesn’t seem so sure,” Bonier says.Now, surprise races are being won for candidates putting abortion at the centre of their campaigns. Republicans lost Alaska’s special House election at the end of August – a surprise victory for Mary Peltola, who was running against Alaska’s former governor, Sarah Palin, and against Nicholas Begich, a Republican who comes from a lineage of Alaskan Democrats.Younger people, in particular, are playing a key role in the surge in women voting. Usually, voter turnout is particularly low for young people in midterms and primaries. But in Kansas, voters under the age of 30 comprised over 14% of ballots cast, surpassing their vote share for each of the past three general elections in Kansas.Katharine from Minnesota, who just turned 18 and did not give her surname for privacy, will vote for the first time in November. She remembers the moment she heard about the Dobbs decision: she was sitting in history class.“Somehow, in my mind, I still thought it wouldn’t happen, that once [the draft opinion] was leaked, maybe the public would somehow sway the decision,” she says.She had written many school assignments about the importance of judicial precedent – and here she was seeing it all torn down.“That’s when I knew I had to vote,” she says. “To see a lot of things I’ve grown up viewing as basic rights being taken away was very jolting.“I am ready to put these politicians in their place. We’re tired of the older guys in office telling us what to do with our bodies.”Bonier cautions that young people usually surge in voter registration closer to midterms, and that first-time voters make up a tiny proportion of those who are registering to vote.But, he says, past election cycles indicate that when a group shows a greater level of intensity at a particular point – registering to vote for the first time in increased numbers – those numbers translate to a higher level of turnout overall for that group. In Michigan, Koenig recalls feeling stirred when she heard Ruth Bader Ginsberg, one of her idols, talk about abortion as a human right, rather than simply an issue of gender.“Forcing a woman to have a child, it affects everything,” Koenig says. “It’s not just an issue of abortion. It’s a racial issue. It’s a women’s rights issue. And I feel like a lot of these politicians are so concerned with their power, they don’t think about how we going to support babies that are going to be born.“If something terrible happens to me, I want to have a choice in the matter.”TopicsAbortionUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

The end of the debate? Republicans draw the curtain on political theaterIt’s a time-honored tradition, but as the US midterms loom, many Republican candidates are ducking out of televised debates The vast collections of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington contain two brown wooden chairs. Their backs have labels explaining that they were used by John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon in “the first face-to-face discussion between presidential candidates” at the CBS television studio in Chicago in 1960.In short, the first televised presidential debate. And where America led, the rest of the world followed, copying the model of gladiatorial political combat as the ultimate format to help voters make up their minds.But heading into the US midterm elections, the debate appears to be in decline, a casualty of fragmented digital media, a deeply polarised political culture and a democracy losing its sense of cohesion.For many Republicans, ducking debates is a way to express disdain for a national media that former president Donald Trump has derided as “fake news” and “the enemy of the people”. Some Democrats have a different motive, refusing to share a platform with Republican election deniers peddling baseless conspiracy theories.In Arizona, for example, Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Katie Hobbs has declined a debate with Republican Kari Lake, a telegenic Trump supporter who has pushed his “big lie” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.But Republicans are the main objectors. In Nebraska, gubernatorial candidate Jim Pillen has refused to debate Democrat Carol Blood. Pillen’s campaign manager, Kenny Zoeller, told the Nebraska Examiner that “he doesn’t do political theater”.Biden says US democracy is under threat. Here’s what he can do to help fix it | Stephen MarcheRead moreIn the Pennsylvania’s governor’s race, Republican extremist Doug Mastriano has rejected a televised debate with an independent moderator. Instead he has reserved a hotel ballroom on 22 October and selected a partisan to referee: Mercedes Schlapp, who was strategic communications director in the Trump White House. Democratic rival Josh Shapiro has little incentive to accept.In North Carolina, Ted Budd, who sat out four Republican primary debates in his Senate race, has said he will not accept an invitation from the North Carolina Association of Broadcasters to debate Democrat Cheri Beasley. Budd said he had accepted a cable debate invitation, but there is no agreement with Beasley about that appearance.It is a sorry state of affairs for a time-honored tradition that America exported around the world. Even Britain, after decades of resistance, followed suit in 2010 with three leaders’ debates between prime minister Gordon Brown, Conservative David Cameron and Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg.“Believe it or not, I watched all four of the Kennedy-Nixon debates and you could hear a pin drop anywhere you went,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “Everybody was watching. In fact, over 70m watched and the number of votes that year? 70m.“But in the era of 400 channels, when polarization is so intense that the vast majority of voters already know for whom they’re voting, it doesn’t matter what happens in a debate or if there is a debate. The costs of not debating are very small. ”The format is not quite dead yet.In Pennsylvania, Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman has agreed to one contest with Republican nominee Mehmet Oz, while in Georgia, Democrat incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker (who dodged primary debates) appear to be inching closer to a deal.In Michigan, after prolonged wrangling, Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer and Republican nominee Tudor Dixon finally agreed to a single debate next month.Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis is set to debate Democratic challenger Charlie Crist but only once and only on a West Palm Beach TV station. In Texas, Republican governor Greg Abbott has granted a single debate to Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke – but it will be on a Friday night and competing for eyeballs with the high school American football season.In each case, the enthusiasm to debate is underwhelming: candidates appear to be looking for an excuse not to do it in a divided America where the sliver of undecided voters offers diminishing returns.They turn instead towards partisan echo chambers aimed at motivating turnout from their own bases. Republicans, in the particular, have been snubbing the mainstream media in favour of fringe rightwing outlets during the campaign so far. It is one more blow to the idea of communal experience, shared reality and the glue that holds democracy together.Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said: “It’s dangerous because these televised debates at all levels have been one of the few good things about democracy in the modern era. People had to stand up there and defend themselves and say what they believed and let the voters take a good look at them.”But Kamarck, who worked in the Clinton White House, remains optimistic that the shift is not permanent. “It is driven by a group of Republican candidates who are very inexperienced and ideological and know that they can’t do well in a debate because there’s so many things that they are for that are either unpopular or indefensible in terms of policy.“What you see here is a Republican party that’s gone off the rails led by Donald Trump. It is this year’s crop of candidates who are not very serious people and can’t debate but I do think debates will return when the Republican party starts nominating normally qualified people to run.”The acid test will come in 2024. From Ronald Reagan’s “There you go again” tease of Jimmy Carter, to George H W Bush’s ill-judged glance at his watch, to Trump’s apparent threat to jail Hillary Clinton, presidential debates have provided marquee moments even though, in truth, they may not have changed many minds.There was an ominous sign earlier this year when the Republican National Committee, which has proved a cheerleader for Trump, voted unanimously to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates, which was founded in 1987 to codify debates as a permanent part of presidential elections.Aaron Kall, director of debate at the University of Michigan, who attended presidential debates over the past two cycles, said: “One of the great things about a debate is seeing a candidate have to deal with a question maybe that they didn’t think of or they didn’t plan for and, under pressure, how they address that.“When we’re looking for candidates for these really important positions we want to see – how they answer the 3am phone call or deal with something unexpected. It’s pretty good on the job training and rehearsal for the actual job over an hour and a half. We have all these different ways in which to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of candidates and it’s just another one that is going by the wayside.”TopicsUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022RepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

Servants of the Damned review: Trump and the giant law firm he actually paidDavid Enrich delivers a withering study of how big law got into bed with the 45th president – Jones Day in particular Donald Trump stiffed his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to the tune of $2.5m. He refused to grant him a pardon. The former New York City mayor is a target of prosecutors in Fulton county, Georgia. Then again, as David Enrich of the New York Times writes in his new book, by the time Trump entered politics his “reputation for shortchanging his lawyers (and banks and contractors and customers) was well known”. Giuliani can’t say he wasn’t warned.The Divider review: riveting narrative of Trump’s plot against AmericaRead moreIn Servants of the Damned, Enrich also recounts how Trump once attempted to settle a bill for nearly $2m.“This isn’t the 1800s … You can’t pay me with a horse,” the unnamed lawyer replied.Trump eventually coughed up. It was that or another lawsuit.Enrich is the Times’ investigative editor. Dark Towers, his previous book, examined Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank. It also laid out the ties that bound Anthony Kennedy, the retired supreme court justice, to the Trump family. Kennedy’s son once worked at the bank. Brett Kavanaugh, who replaced Kennedy on the court, once clerked for the judge.Servants of the Damned is informative and disturbing. In an unflattering portrait of the rise of big law, behemoth firms that reach around the globe, Enrich homes in on Jones Day. He tags other powerhouses – Paul Weiss, Skadden Arps and Baker McKenzie – for moral failures but repeatedly returns his gaze to the Cleveland-based Jones Day. It represented Trump.Whether the intensity of Enrich’s disdain is deserved is debatable. The public holds lawyers in lower esteem than auto mechanics, nursing home operators, bankers and local politicians. On the other hand, lawyers fare better than reporters. Beyond that, the bar’s canons demand that lawyers zealously represent their clients. Reputational concern and the ease or difficulty of recruiting fresh talent and clients are often more potent restraints than finger-wagging.Beginning in 2015, Jones Day was the Trump campaign’s outside counsel – which Enrich treats as an indelible stain. Almost six years later, he writes, the roof of Jones Day’s Washington office provided “a splendid view of a violent mob storming the Capitol”.The insurrection, Enrich says, was the “predictable culmination of a president whom Jones Day had helped elect, an administration the firm’s lawyers had helped run, and an election whose integrity the firm had helped erode”.Jones Day was not Trump’s post-election counsel, but Enrich assigns culpability. In the aftermath of the 2020 vote, one Trump White House insider lamented to the Guardian that Jones Day wrongly distanced itself from Trump’s efforts to overturn his defeat. The campaign paid Jones Day millions. Gratitude and support, the insider said, were in order.Jones Day lawyers marbled the administration. Don McGahn, a partner and a pillar of the conservative bar, was Trump’s first White House counsel. Trump made Noel Francisco solicitor general. Eric Dreiband led the civil rights division at the Department of Justice. All three are back at Jones Day. The revolving door is real.McGahn played a critical role in filling the federal bench with conservative judges who had Federalist Society approval. He presided over a revolution, of sorts. Roe v Wade, the supreme court ruling that guaranteed the right to abortion, lies in tatters.But when McGahn refused to cross the proverbial line during the Russia investigation, Trump soured on him. McGahn made and kept notes – to Trump’s consternation. McGahn quit in fall 2018. The following spring, Trump tweeted: “McGahn had a much better chance of being fired than [Robert] Mueller. Never a big fan!”Enrich also sheds light on the unrest Trump caused within Jones Day, particularly among lawyers who identified as mainstream Republicans. In 2014, Ben Ginsberg and McGahn arrived from another DC law firm. Ginsberg possessed sterling GOP credentials. He had worked at the apex of George W Bush and Mitt Romney’s White House campaigns. Enrich describes his office as “a shrine to the old Republican party”.But in the 2020 cycle, Ginsberg grew discomforted by the direction of Trump’s re-election bid. He called the president’s rhetoric “beyond the pale”. In late August, he resigned. Days later, he wrote a brutal column in the Washington Post, attacking Trump for pushing the lie of widespread election fraud and rubbishing mail-in voting.“The president’s rhetoric,” he said, “has put my party in the position of a firefighter who deliberately sets fires to look like a hero putting them out.” Republicans “risk harming the fundamental principle of our democracy: that all eligible voters must be allowed to cast their ballots. If that happens, Americans will deservedly render the GOP a minority party for a long, long time.”Days before the election, Ginsberg warned that his party was “destroying itself on the altar of Trump”.Holding the Line review: Geoffrey Berman blasts Barr and dumps TrumpRead moreThen there was Donald Ayer, deputy solicitor general in the Reagan administration and deputy attorney general under George HW Bush. After a clash with Dick Thornburgh, then attorney general, Ayer resigned. Bill Barr was his replacement. Ayer returned to Jones Day. In fall 2016, Ayer publicly voiced his opposition to Trump. In 2018, he retired. Before Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021, Ayer told Enrich Jones Day “should have gotten off the wagon, because [Trump] is a scoundrel”.But in 2020, according to Open Secrets, the firm netted more than $19.2m in reported federal campaign spending. Trump was a golden ticket.Jones Day has emerged as a “go-to firm for Republicans, mainstream and fringe alike”, as Enrich puts it. With sneakers, vodka and computers, branding matters. Law firms are a little different. Through that lens, Servants of the Damned is as much a rebuke of one large firm as it is an indictment of Trump’s Republican party.
Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice is published in the US by HarperCollins
TopicsBooksLaw (US)Politics booksUS politicsTrump administrationDonald TrumpRepublicansreviewsReuse this content More

Trump: US justice department appeals judge’s Mar-a-Lago investigation holdDoJ seeks to continue reviewing a batch of classified documents seized during an FBI search of Donald Trump’s Florida home The justice department asked a federal appeals court on Friday to lift a judge’s order that temporarily barred it from reviewing a batch of classified documents seized during an FBI search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida home last month.The department told the 11th circuit US court of appeals in Atlanta that the judge’s hold, imposed last week, had impeded the “government’s efforts to protect the nation’s security” and interfered with its investigation into the presence of top-secret information at Mar-a-Lago. It asked the court to remove that order so work could resume, and to halt a judge’s directive forcing the department to provide the seized classified documents to an independent arbiter for his review.Special master in Trump documents case described as fair and no-nonsenseRead more“The government and the public would suffer irreparable harm absent a stay” of the order, department lawyers wrote in their brief to the appeals court.US district judge Aileen Cannon’s appointment of a so-called special master to review the documents, and the resulting legal tussle it has caused, appear certain to slow by weeks the department’s investigation into the holding of classified documents at the Florida property after Trump left office. The justice department has been investigating possible violations of multiple statutes, including under the Espionage Act, but it remains unclear whether Trump, who has been laying the groundwork for a potential presidential run, or anyone else might be charged.The FBI says it took about 11,000 documents, including roughly 100 with classification markings found in a storage room and an office, while serving a court-authorized search warrant at the home on 8 August. Weeks after the search, Trump lawyers asked a judge to appoint a special master to conduct an independent review of the records.Cannon granted the request last week, assigning a special master to review the records and weed out any that may be covered by claims of attorney-client or executive privilege. She directed the department to halt its use of the classified documents for investigative purposes until further court order, or until the completion of the special master‘s work.On Thursday night, she assigned Raymond Dearie, the former chief judge of the federal court based in Brooklyn, to serve in the role. She also declined to lift her earlier order, citing ongoing disputes about the nature of the documents that she said merited a neutral review by an outside arbiter.“The Court does not find it appropriate to accept the Government’s conclusions on these important and disputed issues without further review by a neutral third party in an expedited and orderly fashion,” she wrote.The justice department on Friday night told the appeals court that Cannon’s injunction “unduly interferes with the criminal investigation”, prohibiting investigators from “accessing the seized records to evaluate whether charges are appropriate”. It also prevents the FBI from using the seized records in its criminal investigation to determine which documents, if any, were disclosed and to whom, the department said.Though Cannon has said investigators are free to do other investigative work that did not involve a review of the documents, the department said on Friday that that was largely impractical. Noting the discovery of dozens of empty folders at Mar-a-Lago marked classified, it said the judge’s hold appeared to bar it from “further reviewing the records to discern any patterns in the types of records that were retained, which could lead to identification of other records still missing”.The department also asked the appeals court to reject Cannon’s order that it provide the newly appointed special master with the classified documents, suggesting there was no reason for the arbiter to review highly sensitive records that did not involve questions of legal privilege.“Plaintiff has no claim for the return of those records, which belong to the government and were seized in a court-authorized search,” department lawyers wrote. “The records are not subject to any possible claim of personal attorney-client privilege. And neither Plaintiff nor the court has cited any authority suggesting that a former President could successfully invoke executive privilege to prevent the Executive Branch from reviewing its own records.”Cannon has directed Dearie to complete his work by 30 November and to prioritize the review of the classified documents. She directed the justice department to permit the Trump legal team to inspect the seized classified records with “controlled access conditions” something government lawyers said on Friday was needless and harmful.On Friday, Dearie, a former federal prosecutor, scheduled a preliminary conference with Trump lawyers and justice department lawyers for Tuesday afternoon.TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsTrump administrationFBIMar-a-LagonewsReuse this content More

Criticism intensifies after big oil admits ‘gaslighting’ public over green aimsFury as ‘explosive’ files reveal largest oil companies contradicted public statements and wished bedbugs upon critical activists Criticism in the US of the oil industry’s obfuscation over the climate crisis is intensifying after internal documents showed companies attempted to distance themselves from agreed climate goals, admitted “gaslighting” the public over purported efforts to go green, and even wished critical activists be infested by bedbugs.The communications were unveiled as part of a congressional hearing held in Washington DC, where an investigation into the role of fossil fuels in driving the climate crisis produced documents obtained from the oil giants ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP.“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they wish bedbugs on you, then you win,” said Varshini Prakash, executive director of Sunrise. The organization accused Shell of a “legacy of violence and of ignoring the wellbeing of communities across the globe”.Pakistan floods ‘made up to 50% worse by global heating’Read moreThe revelations are part of the third hearing held by the House committee on oversight and reform on how the fossil-fuel industry sought to hamper the effort to address the climate crisis. Democrats, who lead the committee, called top executives from the oil companies to testify last year, in which they denied they had misled the public.The new documents are “the latest evidence that oil giants keep lying about their commitments to help solve the climate crisis and should never be trusted by policymakers”, said Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity.“If there is one thing consistent about the oil and gas majors’ position on climate, it’s their utter inability to tell the truth,” Wiles added.Ro Khanna, co-chair of the committee, said the new documents are “explosive” and show a “culture of intense disrespect” to climate activists. The oil giants’ “climate pledges rely on unproven technology, accounting gimmicks and misleading language to hide the reality,” he added. “Big oil executives are laughing at the people trying to protect our planet while they knowingly work to destroy it.”Several of the emails and memos within the released trove of documents appear to show executives, staffers and lobbyists internally contradicting public pronouncements by their companies to act on lowering planet-heating emissions.Exxon, which recently announced profits of $17.9bn for the three months until June, more than three times what it earned in the same quarter a year ago, has publicly said it is “committed” to the Paris climate agreement to curb global heating.However, the documents released by the Democratic-led House committee include an August 2019 memo by an executive to Darren Woods, Exxon’s chief executive, on the need to “remove reference to Paris agreement” from an announcement by an industry lobby group that Exxon is a member of.Such a statement “could create a potential commitment to advocate on the Paris agreement goals”, the executive warned. A separate note on a 2018 Exxon presentation also admitted that biofuels derived from algae was still “decades away from the scale we need”, despite the company long promoting it as a way to lower emissions.Shell, meanwhile, has committed to becoming a “net zero” emissions business by 2050, and yet the documents show a private 2020 communication in which employees are urged to never “imply, suggest, or leave it open for possible misinterpretation that (net zero) is a Shell goal or target”. Shell has “no immediate plans to move to a net-zero emissions portfolio” over the next 10 to 20 years, it added.A Shell tweet posted in 2020 asking others what they could do to reduce emissions resulted in a torrent of ridicule from Twitter users. A communications executive for the company wrote privately that criticism that the tweet was “gaslighting” the public was “not totally without merit” and that the tweet was “pretty tone deaf”. He added: “We are, after all, in a tweet like this implying others need to sacrifice without focusing on ourselves.”The UK-headquartered oil company, which in July announced a record $11.5bn quarterly profit, also poured scorn on climate activists, with a communications specialist at the company emailing in 2019 that he wished “bedbugs” upon the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led US climate group.Previous releases of internal documents have shown that the oil industry knew of the devastating impact of climate change but chose instead to downplay and even deny these findings publicly in order to maintain their business model.The hearings have been attacked by Republicans as a method to “wage war on America’s energy producers” and the oil companies involved have complained that the documents don’t show the full picture of their stance on the climate crisis.Exxon supports the 2015 Paris climate deal, a spokesman said, claiming that the “selective publication of dated emails, without context, is a deliberate attempt to generate a narrative that does not reflect the commitment of ExxonMobil and its employees, to address climate change and play a leading role in the transition to a net-zero future.”A Shell spokesman, meanwhile, said the committee chose to highlight only a small handful of the nearly half a million pages it provided to the body on its “extensive efforts” to take part in the energy transition.“Within that pursuit are challenging internal and external discussions that signal Shell’s intent to form partnerships and share pathways we deem critical to becoming a net-zero energy business,” he said.TopicsClimate crisisUS politicsFossil fuelsOilnewsReuse this content More