US Politics

Covid caused huge shortages in US labor market, study showsAt least 500,000 people have permanently disappeared from the workforce, analysis says Research into the lingering effects of Covid-19 on the US workforce has confirmed what anybody who has waited an extended time for a delivery – or been unable to get a restaurant table – already knows: the pandemic has caused massive shortages in the labor market.On top of the quarter-million people of working age who have died from coronavirus, at least twice that number across all ages have permanently disappeared from the workforce, the analysis by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows.Other studies have shown the impact on the workforce of long Covid, where symptoms remain months or years after the initial infection has passed. A Brookings Institution study estimated last month that as many as 2.4 million have missed work, are temporarily absent or are working reduced hours because of the lingering effects of the virus.However, this new study focuses more on the apparent effect on labor supply caused by the pandemic and those who have permanently stopped working – through choice or necessity – as a result of their sickness.Among the main reasons are large numbers of working people transitioning straight from illness into retirement, according to the researchers, who looked at federal and state level data on Covid infections as well as deaths to evaluate the probability of workers remaining in the labor force after getting sick.“Our estimates suggest Covid-19 illnesses have reduced the US labor force by approximately 500,000 people,” say the study’s authors, Gopi Shah Goda of Stanford University and Evan Soltas of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s economics department.“Covid-19 illnesses persistently reduce labor supply. We estimate that workers with week-long work absences are 7% less likely to be in the labor force one year later compared to otherwise-similar workers who do not miss a week of work for health reasons.”The study adds: “Many who fall ill but survive Covid-19 suffer from enduring health problems … approximately 500,000 adults are neither working nor actively looking for work due to the persistent effects of Covid-19 illnesses.”The researchers say that while labor shortages caused by the pandemic are apparent in all corners of industry, it has been a challenge to evaluate their permanence.“Many in government and the media have speculated that such post-acute conditions have reduced labor supply, but data limitations have made it difficult to assess these impacts and the economic costs of Covid-19 illnesses more broadly,” the authors say.The Guardian has reported how some employers around the US are responding to perceived worker shortages by pursuing cheap sources of labor, such as people currently or formerly in prison.The restaurant industry in Michigan, Texas, Ohio and Delaware recently announced a prison work release program for the food service and hospitality industries. And in April, Russell Stover candy production facilities in Iola and Abilene, Kansas, began using prison labor through the Topeka correctional facility in response to staffing issues disrupting production lines.Meanwhile, a waste management conference in Nevada in June heard that a solution to their own industry’s shortage of workers could also be addressed by tapping the less “traditional” talent pool.TopicsUS newsCoronavirusUS economyUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Guess what, women can vote! Is that why even hardline anti-abortion Republicans are backtracking?Arwa MahdawiIn the weeks after Roe v Wade was overturned, there was a huge rush to register to vote. Now rightwing candidates are toning down their rhetoric but history tells us they can’t be trusted Want to know a fun fact about women in the US? They comprise half the population and they’ve got the right to vote. Pissing them off en masse is a risky political move –as Republicans are quickly finding out. A few months ago it looked like Republicans would decimate the Democrats in the midterm elections in November; now they are on much shakier ground. A recent Wall Street Journal poll found that 60% of voters support abortion rights in most or all cases, and that the supreme court overturning Roe v Wade earlier this year is “the single issue most likely to make them vote this November”. In the two weeks after Roe was overturned, the number of people registering to vote increased by 10%, new women voters far outnumbering men.Cue furious back-pedalling from the right on women’s rights. Numerous Republican congressional candidates have removed or amended references to abortion from their online profiles in recent months, the Washington Post reports. Colorado state senator Barbara Kirkmeyer, for example, no longer refers to the “sanctity of life” on her campaign website. Arizona senate candidate Blake Masters has also been hitting the delete button. In an interview this year with a Catholic news outlet, Masters compared abortion to “child sacrifice”, saying: “It needs to stop.” Last month he toned down his language and clarified he simply supports “a ban on very late-term and partial-birth abortion”. He also amended his website so it no longer proclaims he is “100% pro-life” and instead says: “Protect babies, don’t let them be killed,” followed with: “Democrats lie about my views on abortion.”Minnesota Republican gubernatorial nominee Scott Jensen has similarly moved away from publicly espousing hardline views on abortion. In March, Jensen said in a radio interview that he would “try to ban abortion … There is no reason for us to be having abortions going out.” In a video released in July, Jensen said his previous comments were clumsy, and announced he supports abortions in cases of rape or incest or if the life of the woman is in danger. (Thank you, sir, very nice of you to suggest it’s OK for a woman not to be forced to give birth if she will almost certainly die doing so!)‘A wakeup call’: more Republicans are softening staunch anti-abortion stanceRead moreThere’s nothing wrong with politicians changing their minds; on the contrary, politicians should be commended for thoughtfully evolving their positions based on feedback from the people they represent. Sadly, I don’t think that’s what is happening here. What’s happening here is that a lot of Republicans are morally bankrupt idiots who are happy to tone down their rhetoric to win elections and are likely to rapidly revert to their extremist agenda as soon as they get into power. That’s what supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh appeared to do, after all. Senator Susan Collins, one of the few Republicans to support abortion rights, said she would nominate Kavanaugh because he had reassured her that he was a big fan of judicial precedent and wouldn’t overturn Roe. Though others have challenged Collins’ account of what Kavanaugh said.We’re often told abortion is a divisive issue. The thing is, it’s not. Poll after poll shows most Americans support abortion being broadly legal. Just look at Kansas. Last month the conservative state decisively voted to reject a ballot measure that would restrict abortion rights. (A “ballot measure” is a form of direct democracy where proposed legislation is approved or rejected by voters rather than legislators.) Instead of reflecting on what happened in Kansas, Republicans across the US are now working overtime to try to make it harder to pass ballot measures.Republicans may be doing their best to suppress democracy but it’s not dead yet. “To those of you who feel that women are inferior, remember you were warned,” Republican South Carolina state senator Sandy Senn recently told colleagues. “I think it’s going to be interesting to see what happens in the November elections. Because this issue is huge. You don’t think that women will vote single-issue on something like this? Because they will.” The problem is, where there’s a will, there’s often a Republican way to subvert it.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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Biden says not all Republicans are Trumpists. But that position has limitsJan-Werner MüllerThe president wants to separate ‘extremist Maga Republicans’ from the decent folks on the right. Can he? In recent high-profile speeches, Joe Biden has been performing a high-wire rhetorical act. He is not shying away from the f-word (fascism) – the ultimate condemnation in humanity’s political vocabulary – even if he qualifies that condemnation by calling some on the American right “semi-fascists”.At the same time, he is putting a lot of effort into separating “extremist Maga Republicans” from the decent folks on the right, be it your nextdoor conservative neighbor or Biden’s old chums across the aisle in the US Senate. No matter the level of polarization, the president appears to suggest, you can have a barbecue with the former, and with some senators you might still be able to have a beer and discover a shared humanity (unless it’s Mitch McConnell).On the face of it, this seemingly contradictory rhetoric makes sense as a political tactic; less obviously, it’s also the right thing to do in a democracy where you ought to be careful about throwing blanket accusations at large parts of the citizenry. But, absent a plan for how to address Trump’s “base” and bring it back into the democratic fold or, failing that, render it politically powerless, this approach is likely to contribute little to securing the American experiment in self-government.Biden evidently wants to find a way politically to isolate what he calls extremists. But there’s a problem with the very term here: “extremism” points back to the exhausted and counterproductive political language of centrism. Centrism isn’t a bad thing as such (I realize some readers of this column will disagree), but it turns toxic in a situation of asymmetrical polarization: the centrist, in order to avoid the charge of extremism herself, studiously has to aim for some equidistance. But the political battlefield can then be reshaped by those willing to adopt ever more outlandish positions and thereby shift the center itself. Evidently, no matter what he does or says, Biden (and even the most pro-corporate Democrats in Congress) will have the charge of “radical left” hurled at them by Republican leaders.The image of center and extreme also makes it easier for Republicans to push back against Biden as “divisive” – because centrism’s kitschy political fantasy is ultimately always bipartisanship of the reasonable huddling together in the middle. Anything that creates conflict and increases political passion – no matter how justified – might then be framed as detracting from the project of “bringing us all together”. In any case, the point of democracy is actually not to bring us all together; rather, it is about allowing us to deal with our conflicts in a peaceful manner. To be sure, those engaged in conflict should ideally see themselves as partners in the same project of self-government; that’s why it is crucial not to declare one’s opponents to be enemies or traitors, and that’s why Biden is also right not to suggest that every single person who’s ever voted Republican ought to be ostracized.Trump and other right-wing authoritarian populists generalize about – and incite hatred against – citizens they claim do not truly belong to the polity; just remember the former president’s tendency to respond to critics not with arguments (as anyone in government justifying their policies would) but by declaring the critic simply un-American. Biden and others are wise in not wanting to react in symmetrical fashion.But getting the rhetoric at least somewhat right does not solve the underlying political challenge. For years, Never Trumpers have made a lot of noise, a lot of great ads, and, according to critics, also a lot of money; but they have never articulated a strategy for how the remaining supposed mainstream Republicans can either disown, or, as some would like to see it, harshly discipline the Maga base.This summer’s primaries will have convinced many on the right yet again that they do not necessarily have to debase themselves like Kevin McCarthy and kiss the boss’s ring – but that they must never, ever criticize the boss openly. As long as Republicans assume that they need truly Trumpists to win, they can at best aim for the kind of dissimulation which Glenn Youngkin demonstrated in Virginia: run as a responsible corporate type, but also make sure that citizens who have committed to the Trump cult turn out. As the cliche goes, they have to be fed “red meat”, and no matter how rotten the meat (such as lies about the teaching of race in schools), someone has to be willing to serve it.The notion that one can control this process – let’s give something to the base, but govern as a pro-business party otherwise – has been seen as crucial to a post-Trump American right. But it’s based on the very fantasy that finally imploded with Trump’s rise in 2015: that it’s OK to have some racist dog-whistling, some crazy culture war rhetoric, as long as it’s supervised by Republican leaders and strategists who can dial it up or down as they see fit. By now the lesson should be obvious that, if you keep offering red meat, at some point you can’t control the diet anymore.Instead of insulating some Republican leaders from criticism, Biden should have made it clear that Trumpism is also their responsibility and that it’s their job to deal with “extremism” – even if they have to pay a political price. If they’re signaling that they’re not willing to pay that price, at least they’ve revealed how little democracy is ultimately really worth for them.
Jan-Werner Mueller teaches at Princeton and is a Guardian US columnist. His most recent book is Democracy Rules
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Republican senator’s wealth boosted by stake in company with Chinese linksFinancial disclosures show how Ron Johnson’s wealth sharply increased thanks to his holding in Oshkosh-based Pacur Wisconsin Republican senator Ron Johnson, a vocal critic of Beijing who has vowed to launch investigations into the Biden family’s alleged relationships with Chinese businesses, declared $57m in income in his first 10 years in office in connection to his ownership stake in a company whose growth has closely been linked to China.Financial disclosures show the senator’s wealth has sharply increased during his years running for and serving in the Senate thanks to his holding in Oshkosh-based Pacur, a plastics maker where Johnson previously served as top executive.Revealed: leaked video shows Amy Coney Barrett’s secretive faith group drove women to tearsRead moreJohnson is seeking re-election for a third term in a tough contest against Democrat Mandela Barnes, who polls show has a slight edge over the Republican incumbent.During his first run for public office before his 2010 election, Johnson portrayed himself as a successful businessman who knew how to create jobs. An advertisement he used in both his successful 2010 and 2016 campaigns showed the 67 year-old standing in front of a white board, touting his own record as a manufacturer, a fact that he said made him stand out in a sea of lawyers who serve in the Senate.A close examination of Johnson’s financial disclosures and other public filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission, legal filings and other public records reveal that Johnson’s wealth was boosted by his company’s ties to another company that was owned and managed by his family, which in turn grew its business in China, acquired businesses in China, and reported having a loan worth tens of millions of dollars from the Bank of China.In one case, the company run by Johnson’s family sued the US government to try to press for softer trade relations with Beijing, a position that Johnson himself adopted in a rare break with Trump administration policies.Johnson sold his stake in Pacur in 2020, although documents show that an LLC owned by Johnson and his wife, Jane, still receives up to $1m annually through rent and royalties as owners of the building where Pacur operates.Pacur was co-founded by Johnson and his brother-in-law in the 1970s. It was in effect closely tied to a larger company called Bemis, which was founded and run by Johnson’s father-in-law, Howard Curler.SEC documents show that, from about 1998 to 2010, Bemis paid tens of millions of dollars to Pacur, which was a supplier to Bemis. Johnson also personally owned Bemis stock, valued at between $1m and $5.2m on financial disclosure forms. The stock was later gifted to the senator’s family foundation, called the Grammie Jean Foundation.A spokesperson for Johnson said the senator had no beneficial interest in the foundation.Bemis, records show, had a steady and growing presence in China under the leadership of Jeffrey Curler, Howard Curler’s son and Ron Johnson’s brother-in-law. The company has plants in China and in 2013, records show, appear to have acquired tens of millions of dollars in Chinese debt in connection to a Chinese acquisition. SEC filings show that Bemis also disclosed in 2016 that it had a $50m Bank of China loan.Bemis was sold to Australia-based Amcor in 2018 in a deal valued at $6.8bn. The Guardian reached out to Amcor for more details about the $50m loan, which appeared in Bemis filings before Amcor acquired the company. A spokesperson for Amcor said Amcor was not involved in the loan and did not have insights into the transaction.Bemis was also active on issues related to trade during Johnson’s Senate tenure.In two cases, the group filed suit against the US government’s policies on trade in China, including one suit in 2018. In the legal action brought by Bemis and Rollprint Packaging Products, the plaintiffs sued the United States to contest a finding by the International Trade Commission in support of tariffs on China. The lawsuit did not appear to proceed beyond the complaint. At the same time, Johnson was a vocal critic of US trade policy against China, marking a rare disagreement with Trump.Johnson has also made speeches in the Senate that criticized financial transactions by Hunter Biden, which he claimed were tied to “Communist China” and meant that US Joe Biden was “probably” compromised on China.The Biden family’s “vast web of foreign financial entanglements”, Johnson alleged, had serious implications, and Johnson said he and fellow Republican senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa would continue to investigate them.“Our challenge is the deep state does not give up its secrets easily,” Johnson said in a speech on the Senate floor in March.A recent investigation by the Washington Post found that CEFC China Energy, a Chinese energy conglomerate, paid nearly $5m to entities controlled by Hunter Biden and his uncle. But it did not find evidence that Joe Biden personally benefitted or knew about the transactions, which occurred after Biden left the vice-presidency and before he announced his presidential run.Alexa Henning, a spokesperson for Johnson, denied that Johnson had any connections to his own family company’s previous business interactions with Chinese companies.“He never had any managerial involvement in, or knowledge of the management actions taken by Bemis Company” and had “no connection to China or conflict of interest there”.“Until your inquiry, he had no knowledge of Bemis’s business holdings in China or any legal action Bemis was involved in. The Bemis company was one of many customers Senator Johnson’s business sold plastics to,” Henning said.She also defended Johnson’s position on tariffs. “His belief is politicians in both parties have used China’s trade abuses to demagogue against their political opponents without enacting effective solutions.”Henning also denied that Johnson accrued $57m in income in connection to Pacur from 2009 to 2020, because she claimed some of the funds were designated as “gross receipts” even though they are listed in financial disclosure forms as “income”.Gross receipts are the amount of business that an organization reports before stripping out expenses. When asked by the Guardian to explain why Johnson had listed the funds as income in his financial disclosures, and what the Gross Receipts referred to, Henning did not respond.Got a tip? You can contact the reporter at Stephanie.Kirchgaessner@theguardian.comTopicsWisconsinRepublicansUS politicsChinanewsReuse this content More

Rightwing Super Pac to spend $5m to back extremist Blake Masters for SenateThe Trump-backed Arizona Republican has been dogged by racist remarks and views he expressed as a college student A conservative Super Pac will pour money into Arizona to support Blake Masters, the Republican US Senate candidate whose extreme views have raised alarm among Democrats but also hopes, backed by polling, that independents and moderates will not vote for him in November.‘Women are the reason we can win,’ John Fetterman says at Pennsylvania rallyRead morePolitico reported on Monday that Sentinel Action Fund will spend at least $5m to back the Trump-endorsed candidate against the Democrat Mark Kelly, the former astronaut turned gun control campaigner who holds the Senate seat.Like other Trump-backed candidates in crucial states, Masters has struggled in public polling. On Monday, less than two months out from election day, fivethirtyeight.com gave Kelly a six-point lead and a 74% chance of victory.Masters, 36, is an author and venture capitalist with close ties to the billionaire tech investor and Trump donor Peter Thiel.Among controversial statements, Masters has blamed gun violence on Black people; said Democrats are trying to “change the demographics of this country”; and claimed Kamala Harris was only picked to be vice-president because of her race and gender.He has also been dogged by reporting of views he expressed as a student, including advocating for open borders and saying the US should not have entered either world war, although the second was “harder to argue because of the hot button issue of the Holocaust”.Reporting a new batch of emails, HuffPost.com said that while a student at Stanford University, Masters said America was fascist.The report dropped amid Republican anger over Joe Biden’s warnings that US democracy is threatened by “semi-fascist” supporters of Donald Trump.The Senate is split 50-50 but controlled by Democrats through the vote of the vice-president, Harris. Like Ohio, Georgia and Pennsylvania, Arizona is widely seen as a battleground state which could tip the chamber.Jessica Anderson, president of Sentinel Action Fund, told Politico: “Arizona is the center of the fight for America’s soul. It is time for every corner of the conservative coalition to deploy every resource to win the Senate and show up to support our conservative candidates like Blake Masters.”HuffPost reported a newly unearthed batch of emails sent to members of “a left-leaning vegan co-op … where Masters lived” while at Stanford. In the emails, Masters said it was legitimate to be skeptical about the “official story” of the 9/11 attacks, flirted with antisemitism when discussing why America entered the first world war, and said voting was pointless and often immoral.In January 2006, when the White House and Congress were in Republican hands, Masters also composed an email entitled “Fascism + America = right now”.Linking to a blogpost now not available online, he wrote: “The thesis is that the United States government is fascist. I hope that you find the analysis interesting and illuminating. If only one person reads it, it will have been a well-spent Friday night.”Masters’ campaign declined to comment but he has discussed his student writings. During the primary, on social media, he criticised a Republican opponent’s use of such emails but also said: “The leftwing media, of course they’d try to smear me. We knew they were going to try to call me a racist and a sexist and a terrorist.”The party which does not control the White House usually does well in the first midterms of a president’s time in office. This year, however, Democrats hope factors including Trump and the supreme court removing the right to abortion can propel the party to victory.Earlier this month, Barbara Comstock, a former Republican congresswoman, told NPR the party’s struggles in key Senate races were in large part the result of being beholden to Trump.“I think the longer the party stays enthralled to him and tied to him,” she said, “the longer the party is going to be losing in the long term.”TopicsArizonaUS SenateUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Giuliani review: Andrew Kirtzman’s definitive life of Trump’s last lackey A new account of the rise and fall of the man who was ‘America’s mayor’ after 9/11 is both masterful and engrossingRudy Giuliani went from hero to zero. As mayor, he guided New York City and the nation through the trauma of 9/11. Twenty years later, Sacha Baron Cohen captured him with his hands down his pants and cameras rolled as dye ran down his sweaty face. America laughed.‘Donald kept our secret’: Mar-a-Lago stay saved Giuliani from drink and depression, book saysRead moreBefore he was mayor, Giuliani was US attorney for the southern district of New York and US associate attorney general under Ronald Reagan. He frog-marched wayward bankers across trading floors, to the delight of all except Wall Street and civil libertarians.As mayor, Giuliani ruled the city as only a former prosecutor could. He demanded loyalty and brooked no dissent.Andrew Kirtzman’s first biography was called Rudy Giuliani: Emperor of the City. In his second, the author describes an “authoritarian” mayor. According to her sister, the mayor’s mother, Helen Giuliani, “liked” Mussolini. Her husband, Harold, was a stick-up man and leg-breaker for the mob and did prison time at Sing Sing. Under Giuliani, New Yorkers felt safer than they would under Bill de Blasio or, now, Eric Adams. But Giuliani broadcast disdain for the city’s minorities and lacked the temperament, capacity for consensus and deep pockets of Michael Bloomberg, his billionaire successor. All too often, Giuliani simply acted like a thug.After 9/11, he ran for president, made money as a lawyer then became a Trump flunky. Now, thanks to his work to advance the former president’s big lie about election fraud, he is being targeted by prosecutors in Fulton county, Georgia and his law license is suspended. Think of a malevolent Inspector Clouseau.Apparently, Giuliani is conscious of his decline. On the other hand, he has said: “I don’t care about my legacy. I’ll be dead.” That quote leads Kirtzman’s introduction.As a reporter on NY1, Time Warner’s 24-hour local cable news channel, Kirtzman covered Giuliani from the campaign trail to city hall. On 11 September 2001, he was there with the mayor in lower Manhattan. He witnessed Giuliani’s strides, his missteps and his spectacular collapse. Kirtzman’s new subtitle, The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor, says it all.The book is masterful and engrossing. It is girded by more than 40 pages of endnotes. The author and David Holley, his researcher, have performed yeoman work. They capture what made the man tick and what led to his fall from grace. Kirtzman’s critique is leavened with bittersweet impressions and references to Giuliani’s accomplishments.On election night 2020 and after, the former mayor helped Trump resist the will of the people. The social fabric was theirs to torch and shred. Giuliani’s self-righteousness complimented Trump’s refusal to acknowledge defeat. The soon-to-be ex-president offered Giuliani another opportunity to seize center stage. If Trump wouldn’t name him secretary of state, he could at least cosplay as a presidential lawyer.Kirtzman’s book ranks with other essential biographies such as Rudy! by the late and great investigative reporter Wayne Barrett and the more favorable The Prince of the City by Fred Siegel, an urban historian and Giuliani adviser.Kirtzman gets Judith Nathan, Giuliani’s third ex-wife, to truly dish the dirt. She says Giuliani’s crushing failure in the 2008 presidential primary left him broken and clutching the bottle. She credits Trump for providing shelter.“We moved into Mar-a-Lago and Donald kept our secret,” she says.As Kirtzman puts it, Giuliani “dreamed of becoming president from a young age, [but] blew his big moment when it arrived”. In the torrid aftermath, he spoke to therapists but, to quote Nathan, was “always falling shitfaced somewhere”.The couple are divorced but their antipathy continues to smolder. Characteristically, Giuliani has offered a different explanation for his stumbles and falls. He played baseball as a youngster and developed “catcher’s knee”. Does anyone really believe Giuliani was ever a budding Yogi Berra?Anthony Carbonetti, Giuliani’s chief of staff at city hall, is also a family friend. He also talked to Kirtzman, targeting Nathan while delivering a backhanded defense of his former boss. He told Nathan to “stay the fuck” out of Giuliani’s life. To Kirtzman, he opines: “If you spent an extensive amount of time with that woman, you’d drink a lot.”Carbonetti became a conduit between Trump and Giuliani … and, with other members of Giuliani’s retinue, a lobbyist for Qatar.As Kirtzman makes clear, Giuliani was never short on zeal. For Trump, he sought to become the second Roy Cohn, Trump’s all-time favorite lawyer. From seeking dirt in Ukraine to falsely blaming Dominion Voting Systems for Trump’s loss, Giuliani did it all. His capacity for self-abasement was bottomless.‘Unhinged’ Rudy Giuliani drank and ranted about Islam, new book claimsRead moreIn the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, Maria Ryan, a Giuliani associate, sought a pardon and the presidential medal of freedom. She also attempted to get him paid. She failed. Giuliani forgot that even as Cohn lay in hospital, dying of Aids, Trump cast him aside.“I can’t believe he’s doing this to me,” Cohn said. “Donald pisses ice water.”Giuliani has testified before a Fulton county grand jury and the House January 6 committee. He is a defendant in defamation suits brought by Dominion and Smartmatic, another election machines company. In Trumpworld, Maga means Make America Great Again. It might also mean “Making attorneys get attorneys”.Kirtzman’s biography sums things up. Despite it all, two years after the 2020 election he refused to concede, Trump remains the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2024.“Giuliani, on the other hand, [is] finished in every conceivable way.”
Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor is published in the US by Simon & Schuster
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Lawyers for former president Donald Trump have submitted their counterargument to the justice department’s attempt to halt a federal judge’s order preventing them from reviewing documents taken from Mar-a-Lago.The filing is the latest in the squabble over the special master Trump wants appointed to sift through the documents, which the government has objected to because it stops them from reading the materials seized from the former president’s south Florida estate.You can read the filing here. The legal battle over documents seized by the government from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort continued, with the former president’s lawyers rejecting the justice department’s efforts to convince a federal judge to let them continue reviewing the materials. The filing avoided questions of whether what was taken was indeed protected – despite Trump’s assertions that he had declassified everything that was found before leaving office.Here’s a rundown of what else happened today:
Trump also rejected the justice department’s nominees for special master, though declined to say why publicly.
Republicans are considering investigating the security failures that led up to the January 6 attack if they win control of the House.
Democratic candidates are polling strongly in some swing states – but an analysis from The New York Times warns it could be an illusion.
A new poll indicates sizable minorities of Americans would be ok with unelected leaders, and many would also be ok with the government overruling minority ethnicities and religions.
Democrats have spent almost $19 million across eight states in controversial efforts to promote rightwing Republican candidates, believing them to be weaker in the November midterm elections.
Meanwhile in Congress, lawmakers may be back in Washington but not much has happened – yet.The Senate will soon confirm president Joe Biden’s 80th judicial nominee, CNN reports, as Democrats look to make their mark on the federal judiciary:After Salvador Mendoza is confirmed today to the Ninth Circuit, he will be the 80th Biden judicial nominee confirmed — something Schumer just said amounts to more than Trump, Obama, George W. Bush at similar points in their presidencies— Manu Raju (@mkraju) September 12, 2022
The chamber’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has also confirmed that work is ongoing on a new government funding bill, and on finding 10 GOP senators willing to sign on to a bill codifying same-sex marriage rights, according to Politico:Schumer updates: Senate on verge of confirming 80th judge of Biden presidencyBipartisan group still working on same-sex marriage bill, trying to get GOP votesWork ongoing on bill to fund government past Sept. 30— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) September 12, 2022
“If you thought Fulton was a good county to bring your crime to, to bring your violence to, you are wrong.” So declares Fani Willis, the district attorney in Georgia’s Fulton County, in the opening lines of a profile published in The New York Times. While the statement was made in the context of a gang racketeering case, the piece makes clear it could also be said about Donald Trump and the people from Georgia and elsewhere who helped in his attempt to meddle with the state’s 2020 election result. Willis has convened the special grand jury that is investigating that campaign, which has subpoenaed Trump allies including attorney Rudy Giuliani, Republican senator Lindsey Graham and others. The piece doesn’t contain much new details about what the grand jurors have learned, but it makes clear the scope of the ongoing investigation, which some analysts have warned is a source of legal peril for the former president.Here’s more from the profile:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}In recent weeks, Ms. Willis has called dozens of witnesses to testify before a special grand jury investigating efforts to undo Mr. Trump’s defeat, including a number of prominent pro-Trump figures who traveled, against their will, from other states. It was long arm of the law stuff, and it emphasized how her investigation, though playing out more than 600 miles from Washington, D.C., is no sideshow.
Rather, the Georgia inquiry has emerged as one of the most consequential legal threats to the former president, and it is already being shaped by Ms. Willis’s distinct and forceful personality and her conception of how a local prosecutor should do her job. Her comfort in the public eye stands in marked contrast to the low-key approach of another Trump legal pursuer, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.
Ms. Willis, 50, a Democrat, is the first Black woman to lead Georgia’s largest district attorney’s office. In her 19 years as a prosecutor, she has led more than 100 jury trials and handled hundreds of murder cases. Since she became chief prosecutor, her office’s conviction rate has stood at close to 90 percent, according to a spokesperson.
Her experience is the source of her confidence, which appears unshaken by the scrutiny — and criticism — the Trump case has brought.There’s been a new development in the ongoing legal wrangling over the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago and the documents found there. As The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports, Trump’s attorneys have objected to the candidates for special master proposed by the justice department:New: Trump objects to proposed Special Master candidates proposed by DOJ — says it would offer rationale to judge privately https://t.co/1zfTaUzUt6— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) September 12, 2022
Trump objects even to former US district court judge Barbara Jones, who was the special master in the Michael Cohen case in 2018 and Rudy Giuliani in 2021— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) September 12, 2022
Last week, a federal judge granted Trump’s request for a special master to review documents taken by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago to screen for privileged material. The decision stopped the government’s ability to review the seized documents, and the justice department is appealing it.Twenty-one years after 9/11, CBS News reports that five of the defendants held at Guantanamo Bay for alleged involvement in the attacks are negotiating plea deals with the government.The defendants have been incarcerated for years due to disputes over what evidence can be used in the court and, more recently, the Covid-19 pandemic. Plea deals would resolve several of their cases and likely result in lengthy jail sentences, but CBS reports some relatives of those killed in the attack oppose such agreements. “The families are outraged,” said Debra Burlingame, whose brother was among those killed when hijackers steered his plane into the Pentagon.Here’s more from CBS:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The chief defendant is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-described architect of 9/11. The other four defendants are Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, Walid bin Attash and Ammar al-Baluchi.
The possibility of a plea deal has angered the families of some 9/11 victims, including Debra Burlingame, whose brother, pilot Charles “Chic” Burlingame, was killed when al Qaeda terrorists took over his plane, American Airlines Flight 77, and crashed it into the Pentagon.
“We didn’t have remains for weeks,” his sister Debra Burlingame told CBS News. “We were constantly saying to each other, ‘What would Chic want? What would Chic do?’”
Burlingame said she has been in touch with other 9/11 families.
“The families are outraged,” she said of the possibility of plea deals. “They don’t want closure, they want justice.”
Another group, 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, has said that a guilty plea and agreement not to appeal the sentence “would be partly in recognition of the torture each of the defendants experienced” and bring “some measure of judicial finality.”
“All five defendants and the government are all engaged in good faith negotiations, with the idea of bringing this trial which has become a forever trial to an end,” said James Connell, a defense attorney for al-Baluchi.
“Mr. al-Baluchi’s number one priority is obtaining medical care for his torture,” Connell continued. “In order to get that medical care, he is willing to plead guilty to a substantial sentence at Guantanamo in exchange for a guarantee of medical care and dropping the death penalty.The Democratic candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania has put abortion at the center of his pitch to voters, in the latest sign the party is banking on the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade to drum up support in the midterms. Richard Luscombe reports:John Fetterman has placed abortion rights at the top of his agenda to capture Pennsylvania’s Senate seat in November, telling supporters at a raucous rally on Sunday: “Women are the reason we can win. Don’t piss off women.”The Democrat was targeting comments made by his Republican opponent Mehmet Oz in May that abortion at any stage of pregnancy was “murder”.Oz, in keeping with a recent trend among Republican candidates, has attempted to soften his extremist position as the fall’s midterm elections draw closer, insisting that he now believes in exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the woman.But Oz’s rival was uncompromising in his criticism during Sunday’s rally at a community college in rural Pennsylvania attended by several thousand supporters, including a large number of women in pink “Fetterwoman” T-shirts.‘Women are the reason we can win,’ John Fetterman says at Pennsylvania rallyRead moreThe justice department has brought charges against a Texas woman who left threatening voice messages on the phone of a judge involved in disputes around documents taken by the FBI from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, Reuters reports.“Donald Trump has been disqualified long ago, and he’s marked for assassination. You’re helping him, ma’am,” said one of the voicemails, which was allegedly left by Tiffani Shea Gish of the Houston area for Aileen Cannon, a US district judge in Fort Pierce, Florida. Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, last week granted his request for a special master to review documents taken from Mar-a-Lago as part of the government’s investigation into whether the former president unlawfully retained government secrets.Here’s more from Reuters’ report:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Gish faces two criminal charges – influencing a federal official by threat and interstate communications with a threat to kidnap or injure.
Cannon, who was appointed to the bench in 2020 by Trump, ruled last week that she was granting the former president’s request over the Justice Department’s objections to install a “special master” to review the seized records to weed out possibly privileged materials.
The complaint said that on Sept. 3, Cannon forwarded three separate voicemails from Gish, who referred to herself in some of them as “Evelyn Salt,” to the U.S. Marshals Service.
“Donald Trump has been disqualified long ago, and he’s marked for assassination. You’re helping him, ma’am,” one of the voicemails said, according to the complaint.
“He’s marked for assassination and so are you,” the caller also said, while including an expletive.
After FBI agents identified a cellphone number associated with the voicemails, they interviewed Gish at her home, the complaint stated. The FBI said she admitted to leaving the voicemails and confirmed that the number belonged to her and no one else had access to the cellphone.One of the most controversial electoral tactics Democrats have deployed recently is spending money to elevate rightwing candidates in Republican primaries, the logic being that more extreme nominees will hurt the GOP in the November midterm elections.The Washington Post has tallied the money spent on these candidates in an analysis released today, and found it adds up to almost $19 million across eight states, but could go up to $53 million if spending in Illinois is factored in. In that state, Democrats spent massively to help a Republican who said party leaders in the state should not have told Donald Trump to leave the White House when his term was up.The tactic is controversial because it could backfire and result in Republicans who hold extreme views – such as that the 2020 election was stolen – elected to major offices in the November midterms.Here’s more from the Post’s story:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The approach often involves TV ads suggesting that a far-right GOP candidate is too conservative for a state or district and drawing attention to the candidate’s hard line views on abortion, guns and former president Donald Trump — messages that resonate with conservative primary voters. In other cases, Democrats have run ads attacking GOP candidates seen as tougher to defeat in general elections in ways that could erode support for them in Republican primaries.
Total Democratic spending rises to roughly $53 million when a ninth state, Illinois, is added. There, the Democratic Governors Association and the campaign of Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) spent a combined $34.5 million successfully elevating a GOP candidate who has said it was “appalling” that party leaders in Illinois wanted Trump to concede the 2020 election.
Some Democrats explain their actions by saying they are simply getting a jump on attacking Republican candidates for the general election, while others openly acknowledge trying to secure weaker competition in the fall. But there is little dispute about the effect of altering the Republican primaries in ways that could affect the November matchups.
As primary season nears its Tuesday endpoint, Democrats are giving the strategy one more try in New Hampshire, in two congressional races. In the Republican Senate primary, Senate Majority PAC, a group aligned with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), is spending $3.2 million on ads that effectively enhance the candidacy in the GOP primary of ret. Gen. Don Bolduc, by portraying his more moderate rival, state Senate President Chuck Morse, who has trailed in GOP primary polls to Bolduc, as beholden to the party establishment.Neck and neck in Ohio senateIt is only one poll but a recent survey in the Ohio senate race shows Democrat Tim Ryan basically level with right-wing Trump ally and famous author JD Vance. Ohio is a state has has been drifting more red and so the news fits in with a revival of Democrat fortunes over the past month.The Hill has more details: A USA TODAY Network Ohio/Suffolk University poll released Monday found 47 percent of Ohio general election voters said they would vote or lean toward Ryan if the Senate election were held today, while 46 percent said they could back Vance.Six percent of respondents in the poll said they were undecided, while 1 percent said they would support someone else. The slim margin between the two leading candidates falls within the poll’s margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.The legal battle over documents seized by the government from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort continued, with the former president’s lawyers rejecting the justice department’s efforts to convince a federal judge to let them continue reviewing the materials. The filing avoided questions of whether what was taken was indeed protected – despite Trump’s assertions that he had declassified everything that was found before leaving office.Here’s a rundown of what else happened today:
Republicans are considering investigating the security failures that led up to the January 6 attack if they win control of the House.
Democratic candidates are polling strongly in some swing states – but an analysis from The New York Times warns it could be an illusion.
A new poll indicates sizable minorities of Americans would be ok with unelected leaders, and many would also be ok with the government overruling minority ethnicities and religions.
Ukraine is planning to ask Washington for more long-distance weapons to continue its offensive into Russian-held territory, including a missile system its ally had held off on providing for fears it could provoke Moscow, The Wall Street Journal reports.Citing a document shared with US lawmakers, the Journal reports Ukraine will ask for 29 types of weapons and ammunition systems, including anti-ship missiles, drones and tanks. It will also ask for the Army Tactical Missile System, a long-range weapon that Washington fears could be used to strike Russian territory and start a war with Ukraine’s western allies.Here’s more from the Journal’s report:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The Biden administration, which has dispatched more than $15 billion worth of weapons and other security assistance to Ukraine, has declined to provide that system over concerns Ukraine could use it to strike Russian territory and spark a wider conflict with the West.
Ukraine’s list of requirements for “offensive operations” includes 29 types of weapon systems and ammunition. Among them are tanks, drones, artillery systems; more Harpoon antiship missiles; and 2,000 missiles for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or Himars, which the United States began providing earlier this year.
Ukraine’s requests come as its forces have routed Russian troops in northeastern Ukraine.
It follows the recent publication of a strategy statement by Valeriy Zaluzhny, the commander in chief of Ukraine’s force, and Mykhailo Zabrodsky, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and a senior military officer who led the most significant Ukrainian counterattack in the 2014 war with Russia.
They argued that Russia has long-range cruise missiles that greatly outdistance the systems in the Ukrainian inventory. A turning point could come if the Ukrainians also had longer-range systems, they argued, specifically mentioning the ATACMS.Trump may be in hot water, legally speaking, for allegedly taking government secrets with him when he left the White House, but as Ramon Antonio Vargas reports, a new book reveals he never wanted to leave in the first place:In the days after Joe Biden defeated him in the 2020 election, Donald Trump told an aide he was “just not going to leave” the White House, according to a new book on his presidency and its chaotic aftermath.“We’re never leaving,” he vowed to another aide, says the book from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman titled Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. “How can you leave when you won an election?”CNN, where Haberman also serves as a political analyst, said Monday it reviewed reporting for the book – set for a 4 October release – and published new details on Trump’s insistence that he intended to stay at the White House despite his electoral loss to Biden.Trump threatened not to leave White House after election loss, book saysRead more More

NSA analyst jailed for life for selling US secrets to Soviets dies aged 80Ronald Pelton, convicted of espionage in 1986, said he accepted money from America’s cold war enemy because he was desperate A former National Security Agency analyst who was arguably its most damaging traitor and became famous for aiding the Soviets during the cold war died last week, according to an obituary posted on the website of a Maryland funeral home.Ronald William Pelton was 80.Pelton was an NSA intelligence communications specialist who, in November 1985, was arrested for selling government secrets to the Soviet Union. He spent about three decades in prison before he completed serving his sentence in 2015.Pelton’s crimes included selling defense and communication secrets for upwards of $35,000. His most notable breach of trust was informing Soviet intelligence of “Operation Ivy Bells”, a plan put forward by the NSA and the US navy to tap the Soviets’ underwater communication cables.He worked for the NSA for 14 years and retired in 1979, after which he approached the Soviet embassy in Washington to sell government secrets. Pelton’s lawyer said he had betrayed the US because he had fallen on hard financial times and was desperate.At the time, Peloton was making $24,500 a year, which – accounting for inflation – is an estimated $100,000 today.A Soviet KGB agent who had defected reported Pelton to investigators, setting the stage for his prosecution.Despite asking for leniency, Pelton was given three life sentences, plus another 10 years to be served at the same time.“I could at least make the rest of my life count,” Pelton pleaded. His pleas were denied.He was freed from his sentence after stints at a halfway house and then under home confinement.A federal judge said Pelton committed “one of the most serious offenses in the US criminal code”.Pelton’s lawyer in the case, Fred Warren Bennett, called his client’s act of espionage “the biggest mistake of his life”.On his obituary page, Pelton’s daughter Pamela Wright commented: “When I was 19, he left and didn’t return until I was nearly 50. During that span of time there was almost no communication. I grew up. Had a family. Went to college and gained a professional career. Had grandchildren. I lived my life without him.“When he came back, he was quieter. More mellow. With many regrets.”TopicsNSAUS politicsRussianewsReuse this content More