US Politics

Democrats in the Senate are raising their eyebrows at Biden’s decision to travel to Saudi Arabia, objecting to the country’s human rights record and worrying the visit won’t meaningfully lower gas prices.As Oregon’s Ron Wyden told Manu Raju of CNN:Dem pushback this morning on Biden’s decision to meet with MBS. “I don’t see any evidence that the Saudis are going to significantly lower gasoline prices,” Ron Wyden said.On the other hand, I see their horrendous human rights record.”— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 14, 2022
Here’s Maryland’s Ben Cardin, who referenced the murder of Jamal Khashoggi:Asked about WH sidestepping queries yesterday on responsibility for Khashoggi murder, Cardin told us: “I hope they’ll be very clear in the conversation. America’s strength is in our values.”— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 14, 2022
Kaitlan Collins, also of CNN, heard this from Illinois’s Dick Durbin:’I have mixed feelings on this and if the President called me, I would say, ‘Mr. President, you can’t trust these people. Their standards are not our standards, their values are not ours,'” Sen. Dick Durbin says about President Biden’s upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia.— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) June 14, 2022
Congress was at the center of the action today, where the January 6 committee announced the surprise postponement of its Wednesday hearing. Meanwhile, the top Senate Republican said he would support the gun control compromise reached with Democrats, while the House voted to approve a bill to improve security around the supreme court, sending it to the president’s desk.Other top stories today:
President Joe Biden made official his plans to visit Saudi Arabia, which is widely seen as a bid to increase oil supply and lower gas prices at home. Several Democrats have expressed disapproval over the visit, citing the kingdom’s human rights record.
The president meanwhile traveled to in Philadelphia to address a convention of the AFL-CIO trade union federation, in which he defended his economic record and attacked Republican policies.
A top Biden ally in the Senate proposed levying a windfall tax on oil companies as Democrats try to convince voters corporate greed is fueling record-high gas prices.
An investigation by the Capitol Police determined a Republican House representative did not give Trump supporters a tour of the building the day before the January 6 attack.
It’s about to get really hot in America. The National Weather Service is advising more than 100 million people to stay indoors due to high humidity and temperatures.
The US politics live blog will return on Wednesday, with the supreme court set to announce more decisions at 10am ET.The Republican Party is launching a nine-day “election integrity” tour throughout Wisconsin, less than two months before the battleground state’s primary elections. The tour, which begins Wednesday, will start in La Crosse, Wisconsin and go through Wisconsin’s most liberal cities, including the state’s capital, Madison. Planned events will include an appearance from conservative former state Supreme Court judge Daniel Kelly. The tour has already received pushback from those who say it is meant to spread lies that the 2020 election was fraudulent ahead of the primaries and November’s midterm election. Republicans have argued that the roundtable events are meant to recruit poll workers, voting deputies, and other election day staff as well as connect campaign staff with volunteers. The Capitol Police have determined that a Republican House representative did not give a tour to Trump supporters the day before the January 6 attack.CNN reports that the investigation into Barry Loudermilk of Georgia was requested by the chair and vice chair of the House committee investigating the insurrection, over allegations he was seen hosting visitors on 5 January, 2021.“There is no evidence that Representative Loudermilk entered the U.S. Capitol with this group on January 5, 2021,” Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger wrote to the top Republican on the House Administration Committee. “We train our officers on being alert for people conducting surveillance or reconnaissance, and we do not consider any of the activities we observed as suspicious.”Following the attack on the Capitol, several Democrats accused their Republican colleagues of granting tours to people who went on to storm the building as Congress was meeting to certify Joe Biden’s election win.According to CNN:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Manger said the video shows Loudermilk with “a group of approximately 12 people which later grew to 15 people” walking through the Capitol office buildings on January 5. It also states that the group of visitors did not “appear in any tunnels that would lead them to the US Capitol.”
House Republicans suggested they may release video they believe exonerates Loudermilk of any insinuation that he led a so-called “reconnaissance” tour the night before the January 6 riot.
The House select committee declined to comment on Manger’s letter.
The letter the committee sent to Loudermilk last month indicated the panel has reviewed evidence that “directly contradicts” previous claims by Republican lawmakers who said security footage from the days before January 6 shows there were “no tours, no large groups, no one with MAGA hats on” at the US Capitol complex.
“Based on our review of evidence in the Select Committee’s possession, we believe you have information regarding a tour you led through parts of the Capitol complex on January 5, 2021,” Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, and Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming, wrote at the time.The House has passed a measure to increase security for the supreme court, sending it to the president’s desk for his signature.A vote was requested and postponed on S. 4160 – Supreme Court Police Parity Act of 2022. https://t.co/CcET8jSBAI— House Press Gallery (@HouseDailyPress) June 14, 2022
The Senate had unanimously approved the measure back in May, but the House delayed its passage. Republicans in the Senate began attacking Democrats over their failure to pass the measure following last week’s arrest of a man who is charged with planning to kill justice Brett Kavanaugh.Senate approves beefed-up security for US supreme court after abortion leakRead moreVice-president Kamala Harris is meeting with attorneys and activists ahead of a widely expected supreme court decision that could weaken or overturn nationwide abortion rights.VP Harris meeting with legal experts and activist on pending SCOTUS decision on Roe: “I do believe that overturning Roe could clear the way for challenges to other fundamental rights” Named women’s data privacy, IVF, contraception, gay and trans rights pic.twitter.com/qNZnyUEiqo— Jordan Fabian (@Jordanfabian) June 14, 2022
CNN reports that Harris has been encouraged by people outside the Biden administration to lead the charge against any supreme court decision restricting abortion, as a way to better connect with voters. The network quoted an unnamed official as saying Harris’s “goals really have been around ensuring that people in this country have an understanding of what is at stake here.”The supreme court will issue another batch of decisions on Wednesday beginning at 10 am eastern time, though it’s unknown if that will include the abortion case.The Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell said he will support the compromise measure on gun control reached with Democrats over the weekend.The two parties have seldom found agreement on gun control legislation, and McConnell’s endorsement sends a positive signal that the proposal will win enough votes from his party to pass the evenly divided Senate.“If it leads to a piece of legislation, I intend to support it,” McConnell said at a press conference. “I think it’s progress for the country, and I think the bipartisan group has done the best they can to get total support.”While the bill hasn’t been written yet, it doesn’t go as far as many Democrats would like, such as by raising the age to buy an assault weapon to 21 from 18. Many of its provisions focus on improving mental health, as well as offering states money to implement programs intended to stop mass shootings such as those in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York.US senators reach bipartisan gun control deal after recent mass shootings Read moreOne of Biden’s Senate allies has an idea for lowering gas prices: levy new taxes on oil companies’ profits.Bloomberg reports that Democratic senator Ron Wyden will propose putting a 21 percent tax on petroleum companies with profit margins above 10 percent. The idea comes after the average gas price crossed the $5 a gallon level, which the White House has increasingly looked to blame on forces beyond its control, particularly the disruptions to global markets caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Progressive Democrats have meanwhile sought to convince voters that profit-seeking corporations are to blame for the overall spike in inflation Americans are feeling, and last week, Biden took aim at Exxon Mobil, saying the oil giant “made more money than God this year.Wyden’s proposal, which has yet to be released publicly, would however need the approval of all 50 Democrats to make it through the Senate, and tweaks to the tax code were among the contentious issues the party couldn’t reach an agreement on during last year’s unsuccessful attempt to pass Build Back better. From the article:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Taxing excessive oil company profits is one of many policy ideas under consideration in the White House, two administration officials said. Yet internally, aides remain concerned such a tax could hurt ongoing efforts to boost the supply of oil.
If combined with a gasoline rebate, a windfall profits tax would both deter supply and encourage fuel demand, said Kevin Book, managing director of research firm ClearView Energy Partners LLC. “It is the opposite of balancing the market.”
An idea out of Treasury to place a cap on the price of Russian oil, alongside European allies, has gained far more traction inside the administration.
Wyden’s plan would also impose a 25% stock buyback tax for oil and gas companies that repurchase their own shares, Wyden spokeswoman Ashley Schapitl confirmed. Both levies apply to oil and gas companies with at least $1 billion in revenue and would expire at the end of 2025, according to the people briefed on the plan.
Wyden also proposes to eliminate an accounting benefit, known as last-in first-out, or LIFO, that can deliver tax breaks for oil and gas companies with at least $1 billion in revenue starting in 2023.There’s been another sentence handed down over the January 6 attack, this time of a former city councilmember in West Virginia.Eric Barber was sentenced to 45 days in jail for entering the Capitol during the insurrection, as well as a seven-day suspended sentence for stealing a charging station belonging to C-SPAN, West Virginia’s MetroNews reported. The former city councilmember in Parkersburg, West Virginia, also received 24 months of federal probation.“You’re too old and you’re too accomplished and you’re too smart to get involved in nonsense like this,” federal judge Christopher Cooper said during the Thursday sentencing. “This is not about the First Amendment. You are free to express your views. You’re free to support any political candidate or positions or issues that you want. I encourage that. But enough of this nonsense, OK?”According to MetroNews:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Barber, 43, was being sentenced today in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after pleading guilty to two misdemeanors.
One is a count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol Building. The other is theft, an accusation that Barber stole a charging station belonging to a C-SPAN employee.
He has to pay $500 restitution as his share of damage to the Capitol that day, and he has to pay back C-SPAN a little less than $60 for the charger that he took home.
Barber was not accused of violence that day, but prosecutors noted that he wore a Kevlar helmet and went to Washington, D.C. to “go punch a Antifa terrorist in the face,” referring to the loosely-knit antifascist activists sometimes accused of violence themselves.
Prosecutors underscored that Barber entered the Capitol as sirens blared and broken glass was apparent, entering not only the areas that are commonly open to the public but also entering a restricted hallway outside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. Prosecutors said Barber wound up in that hallway twice — the second time after being told to leave. Barber said he was lost.
But Barber and his public defense attorney emphasized that he had expressed remorse about what happened that day to local media, to investigators, to Congress’s January 6th Committee and to the judge.
Judge Cooper took note of all those factors.
“It’s troubling that you still seem to have a mindset of ‘There’s a bully out there. I need to prime for the fight.’ You did not go for self-defense, but you went with the helmet, ready to punch somebody or affirmatively engage in violence,” Cooper said.Barber sentencing memo began with a particularly direct quote.Strongest lede I’ve seen yet in a Jan. 6 defendant’s sentencing memo. pic.twitter.com/3Es2hM4Bpl— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) June 8, 2022
There is still a lot of buzz about the House panel investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection by extremist supporters of Donald Trump, as reports spill out about disagreements over whether to refer Trump for criminal prosecution or just lay out the evidence and let others deduce, etc, as well as today’s abrupt postponement of Hearing No. 3.Most of these tweets speak for themselves.Committee needs to keep on track. No more referral talk in public. Keep to the schedule. There has been unity and absence of grandstanding so far. They must keep it that way.— Jennifer ‘I stand with Ukraine’ Rubin 🇺🇦🇺🇦 (@JRubinBlogger) June 14, 2022
Larry Tribe.“You do not get to arm-twist officials or send the mob to the Capitol because you really, really think you won.”https://t.co/4xtlAfrYf5— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) June 14, 2022
George Conway, cheeky.A Twitter contest—let’s see who can come up with the best answer for:𝘘. 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘥𝘳𝘶𝘯𝘬 𝘙𝘶𝘥𝘺𝘴 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘸 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘣𝘶𝘭𝘣?— George Conway🌻 (@gtconway3d) June 14, 2022
Conway on ZimmerExcellent thread. 🪡 🧵 https://t.co/scpfcj4SR8— George Conway🌻 (@gtconway3d) June 14, 2022
Scuitto on TrumpAs you watch the #January6thHearings remember the principal source of disinformation in the 2016 election was foreign. In 2020, it was the sitting US president. And his lies succeeded in convincing a majority of GOP voters the election was stolen.— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) June 14, 2022
Much of today’s action has occurred in Congress, where the January 6 committee announced the surprise postponement of its Wednesday hearing. The Senate still doesn’t have the bill text of its gun control compromise to vote on, but the House is moving forward with the vote on a a bill to increase security for the supreme court, which the upper chamber has already approved.Here’s what else is going on:
President Joe Biden has made official his plans to visit Saudi Arabia, which is widely seen as a bid to increase oil supply and lower gas prices at home. Several Democrats have expressed disapproval over the visit, citing the kingdom’s human rights record.
The president was meanwhile in Philadelphia to address a convention of the AFL-CIO trade union federation, in which he defended his economic record and attacked Republican policies.
The votes of Republicans in the Senate will be crucial to passing the gun control bill, and more of the party’s senators offered their thoughts on the legislation.
It’s about to get really hot in America. The National Weather Service is advising more than 100 million people to stay indoors due to high humidity and temperatures.
Republicans will be crucial in determining whether the bipartisan gun control proposal makes it through the Senate, and more lawmakers are reacting to the deal reached over the weekend.“I think the framework is very encouraging,” GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski just told me of the guns package. Says she’s eager to see the details but sounds very positive about it. She was not one of the 10 Republicans who signed onto the framework. Bill text still needs to be drafted— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 14, 2022
Thune, No. 2 Republican, uncertain whether he would back Senate’s guns package. While he noted there have been some successes, there are “real concerns about due process” with how states adopt red flag laws.“Those are things that are going to have to be addressed,” he told me— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 14, 2022
But Bill Cassidy, R who backs framework, said the bill would mandate due process in red flag laws. “You can argue that some state red flag laws do not have due process. we mandate it. So I think as people become acquainted with that, Republicans will like that,” he told us— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 14, 2022
“Federal government, we don’t need to be pushing red flag laws,” Tommy Tuberville told me when asked about the guns package. “The states, if the states want to get involved in it, they need to get involved in it.” Plan would incentivize states to enact red flag laws.— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 14, 2022
Asked him how to take away guns from mentally ill. He said: “Well let’s look at what they’ve got proposed. I haven’t looked at all of it. But let’s look…and see if they’ve got anything in there to prohibit mentally ill patients from having guns, anybody that’s having problems”— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 14, 2022
Democrats are expected to back the proposal even though it doesn’t do all of what they want, such as raising the age to purchase an assault rifle to 21 from 18. To avoid a filibuster, at least 10 Republicans in the Senate will need to vote for the bill, which also must clear the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives.Biden has used his speech at the AFL-CIO convention in Philadelphia to promote his handling of the economy make a pitch for keeping Democrats in office.As CBS News’s Ed O’Keefe reports:TODAY: @POTUS Biden addresses a @AFLCIO convention in Philly to tout US economic strength: low unemployment rates, states and cities being buoyed by American Rescue Plan and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. White House says he’ll reiterate fighting inflation “is his top priority.”— Ed O’Keefe (@edokeefe) June 14, 2022
Also expect some election year contrasts: Biden/Dems would “ask the wealthy to pay their fair share” while @SenRickScott and “Congressional Republicans” would “put Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid on the chopping block every five years.”— Ed O’Keefe (@edokeefe) June 14, 2022
A new election-year clarion call of sorts from @POTUS Biden in his @AFLCIO speech: “America still has a choice to make. A choice between a government by the few, for the few. Or a government for all of us, democracy for all of us, an economy where all of us have a fair shot.”— Ed O’Keefe (@edokeefe) June 14, 2022
The president also took special notice of a Republican proposal to make all federal legislation expire after five years, asking, “How well are you going to sleep at night knowing that every five years, Ted Cruz and the other ultra-MAGA Republicans are going to vote on whether you have Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid?”Democrats in the Senate are raising their eyebrows at Biden’s decision to travel to Saudi Arabia, objecting to the country’s human rights record and worrying the visit won’t meaningfully lower gas prices.As Oregon’s Ron Wyden told Manu Raju of CNN:Dem pushback this morning on Biden’s decision to meet with MBS. “I don’t see any evidence that the Saudis are going to significantly lower gasoline prices,” Ron Wyden said.On the other hand, I see their horrendous human rights record.”— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 14, 2022
Here’s Maryland’s Ben Cardin, who referenced the murder of Jamal Khashoggi:Asked about WH sidestepping queries yesterday on responsibility for Khashoggi murder, Cardin told us: “I hope they’ll be very clear in the conversation. America’s strength is in our values.”— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 14, 2022
Kaitlan Collins, also of CNN, heard this from Illinois’s Dick Durbin:’I have mixed feelings on this and if the President called me, I would say, ‘Mr. President, you can’t trust these people. Their standards are not our standards, their values are not ours,'” Sen. Dick Durbin says about President Biden’s upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia.— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) June 14, 2022 More

More than 100 Republican primary winners support Trump’s baseless election claimAt least 108 primary victors in races across several states have won after repeating false claims originated by the former president More than 100 Republican primary winners support Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him.At least 108 primary victors in races across several states have won after repeating claims originated by Trump that electoral fraudsters denied his winning the 2020 election after rigging the race in favor of Joe Biden, according to new analysis from the Washington Post.Those who questioned the 2020 election results won primary races for seats in the House of Representatives, US Senate seats, state gubernatorial mansions, and other high-profile positions.A large amount of primary winners also campaigned on improving electoral security, but they offered no evidence that current practices in that sector are compromised.“These officeholders are so important,” said Joanna Lydgate, founder and CEO of States United Democracy Center, a nonprofit promoting free and fair elections, to the Post. “They are going to be the ones on whose backs our democracy survives or doesn’t.”Excluding primaries from 7 June, eight US Senate candidates, 86 candidates for the House of Representatives, five gubernatorial candidates, four candidates for state attorney general and one for secretary of state have all won while promoting Trump’s 2020 election denialism.Among primary winners who have publicly questioned the results of the 2020 election, many either participated in the January 6 attack on the Capitol or have attempted to reframe that day’s events.JR Majewski, the GOP primary winner for the Ohio congressional district, attended the US Capitol riots and is a proponent of the QAnon baseless internet conspiracy theory, which outlandishly posits that Trump is secretly locked in combat with a cabal of leftist pedophiles.He has also claimed that the 2020 election was fraudulent and has called for Republican states to secede from the US.In Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race, primary winner Doug Mastriano was also at the US Capitol on January 6 and helped bus in supporters. Mastriano has suggested that state legislators should appoint their own electors – ignoring the results of a democratic vote – and hired 2020 election denier Jenna Ellis as apart of his campaign.Besides newcomers, incumbents who previously voted to overturn the 2020 election results also won their primaries, Politico reported.In California, Representative Doug LaMalfa of California’s first district and minority leader Kevin McCarthy both finished atop their primary races.Similarly, Representative Trent Kelly of Mississippi and Representative Matt Rosendale of Montana, who both voted to overturn the 2020 electoral results, had successful primaries, winning with an overwhelming majority of the vote.The primary results demonstrate a startling trend of mainstream Republican voters embracing election denialism and other ideals once thought to be on the fringes of political discourse.Propagation of the false 2020 election fraud claims comes as the House continues investigating the Capitol insurrection, with evidence emerging that Trump was informed via top aides that the election fraud theories were “baseless”.TopicsUS politicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

Palantir, the all-seeing US tech company, could soon have the data of millions of NHS patients. My response? Yikes!Arwa MahdawiYou might never have heard of tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s CIA-backed analytics company. But it could know all about you if it wins a contract to manage NHS data Peter Thiel has a terrible case of RBF – reclusive billionaire face. I’m not being deliberately mean-spirited, just stating the indisputable fact that the tech entrepreneur, a co-founder of PayPal, doesn’t exactly give off feel-good vibes. There is a reason why pretty much every mention of Thiel tends to be peppered with adjectives such as “secretive”, “distant” and “haughty”. He has cultivated an air of malevolent mystique. It’s all too easy to imagine him sitting in a futuristic panopticon, torturing kittens and plotting how to overthrow democracy.It’s all too easy to imagine that scenario because (apart from the torturing kittens part, obviously), that is basically how the 54-year-old billionaire already spends his days. Thiel was famously one of Donald Trump’s biggest donors in 2016; this year, he is one of the biggest individual donors to Republican politics. While it is hardly unusual for a billionaire to throw money at conservative politicians, Thiel is notable for expressing disdain for democracy, and funding far-right candidates who have peddled Trump’s dangerous lie that the election was stolen from him. As the New York Times warned in a recent profile: “Thiel’s wealth could accelerate the shift of views once considered fringe to the mainstream – while making him a new power broker on the right.”When he isn’t pumping money into far-right politicians, Thiel is busy accelerating the surveillance state. In 2004, the internet entrepreneur founded a data-analytics company called Palantir Technologies (after the “seeing stones” used in The Lord of the Rings), which has been backed by the venture capital arm of the CIA. What dark magic Palantir does with data is a bit of a mystery but it has its fingers in a lot of pies: it has worked with F1 racing, sold technology to the military, partnered with Space Force and developed predictive policing systems. And while no one is entirely sure about the extent of everything Palantir does, the general consensus seems to be that it has access to a huge amount of data. As one Bloomberg headline put it: “Palantir knows everything about you.”Soon it might know even more. The Financial Times recently reported that Palantir is “gearing up” to become the underlying data operating system for the NHS. In recent months it has poached two top executives from the NHS, including the former head of artificial intelligence, and it is angling to get a five-year, £360m contract to manage the personal health data of millions of patients. There are worries that the company will then entrench itself further into the health system. “Once Palantir is in, how are you going to remove them?” one source with knowledge of the matter told the FT.How worried should we be about all this? Well, according to one school of thought, consternation about the potential partnership is misplaced. There is a line of argument that it is just a dull IT deal that people are getting worked up over because they don’t like the fact that Thiel gave a bunch of money to Trump. And to be fair, even if you think Thiel is a creepy dude with creepy beliefs, it is important to note that he is not the only guy in charge of Palantir: the company was co-founded in 2003 by Alex Karp, who is still the CEO; he voted for Hillary Clinton and has described himself as a progressive (although, considering his affinity for the military, he certainly has a different view of progress than I do).My school of thought, meanwhile, is best summarised as: yikes. Anyone who has had any experience of the abysmal US healthcare system should be leery of private American companies worming their way into the NHS. Particularly when the current UK government would privatise its own grandmother if the price was right. I don’t know exactly what Palantir wants with the NHS but I do know it’s worth keeping an eye on it. It’s certainly keeping an eye on you.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.comTopicsTechnologyOpinionArtificial intelligence (AI)NHSUS politicsHealthcommentReuse this content More

Like Napoleon at Elba, Donald Trump plots his revenge and returnLloyd GreenFor the moment, the ex-reality show host shuttles between Florida and New Jersey. But he is restless to return Donald Trump knew that he lost re-election but consciously dragged the US on a bloody rollercoaster ride. His mendacity culminated in the 6 January 2021 invasion of the Capitol. Seventeen months have since passed, but the 45th president has not yet voiced a contrite syllable.Instead, the big lie – that Trump actually defeated Joe Biden – stands as Republican orthodoxy. More than half of House Republicans voted against certifying the election. Think of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz as Maga’s poster children. The party of Lincoln has morphed into a mosh pit for conspiracy theories and grievance.Garland says he is watching January 6 hearings amid pressure to investigate TrumpRead moreOn Monday, the House special committee heard from those who Trump willfully ignored. Bill Barr, Trump’s attorney general; Bill Stepien, his campaign manager; and Jason Miller, a senior political adviser, all appeared under oath on the screen.Collectively, their message was consistent. On 3 November 2020, Trump finished second to a man he held in searing contempt. Even Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and Ivanka, the favorite child, grudgingly acknowledged that the electorate had rejected him.Beyond that, they posited that Trump’s post-election denials were anchored in fantasy, nothing more. “Right out of the box on election night, the president claimed that there was major fraud under way,” Barr said on video. “I mean, this happened, as far as I could tell, before there was actually any potential of looking at evidence.”Barr added: “There was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were.” In other words, Trump refused to let reality get in the way of a coup.He proceeded with his bid to unlawfully overturn the election, torch democracy and shred the constitution. If it meant that Mike Pence, Trump’s hapless vice-president, would hang from the gallows, that would be a price that could be paid to slake the then president’s ambition and satisfy his base’s bloodlust.Lest anyone forget, from 2015 onward violence and menace were key ingredients in Trump’s rallies and appeal. Looking back, the distance between hassling MSNBC’s Katy Tur on the campaign trail and killing Pence was short. Trump telling the Proud Boys amid a debate to “stand back and stand by” was part prelude and part battle cry. Two months later, the nation witnessed the bloody aftermath.In the near term, the committee’s hearings are unlikely to move voters. But 2024 may present a different opportunity.Against the backdrop of inflation and concerns about crime, a Republican victory in the upcoming midterms remains the likeliest outcome. By the numbers, half the US sees the hearings as having no impact on how they vote in less than a half-year. Among Republicans, that figure swells to nearly 70%.Further out, the hearings may render Trump unacceptable to a sufficiently large segment of Republican primary voters – with Ron DeSantis, Florida’s culture war governor, emerging as the main beneficiary.Despite January 6 panel efforts to stamp out Trump’s big lie the myth rages on Read moreAlready, betting markets give Trump and DeSantis the same 38% chance of winning their party’s presidential nomination. Likewise, punters say that both men possess just under a three-in-10 shot of being elected president. For the DeSantis, those are great numbers; for Trump, not so much.And then there are Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers – the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. A 10 January 2022 WSJ editorial blared: “The evidence of the January 6 committee: it’s a reminder of the violence and how Trump betrayed his supporters”. Over at the Post, the tabloid branded Trump as “the King Lear of Mar-a-Lago”, accused him of refusing to “accept reality”, and characterized January 6 as “a national shame.”Right now, Rudy Giuliani still appears ready to whisper sweet little lies into Trump’s ears. For the moment, the ex-reality show host shuttles between Florida and New Jersey. He remains restless. Like Napoleon at Elba, he plots his revenge and return. Don’t expect him to accede to reality any time soon.
Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York. He was opposition research counsel to George HW Bush’s 1988 campaign and served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
TopicsDonald TrumpOpinionJan 6 hearingsUS politicscommentReuse this content More

Roger Stone and Michael Flynn under fire over rallies ‘distorting Christianity’Prominent Christian leaders accuse Trump allies of spreading misinformation about 2020 election and Covid, while distorting Christian teachings at ReAwaken America events A growing number of prominent Christian leaders are sounding alarms about threats to democracy posed by ReAwaken America rallies where Donald Trump loyalists Michael Flynn and Roger Stone and rightwing pastors have spread misinformation about the 2020 elections and Covid-19 vaccines, and distorted Christian teachings.The falsehoods pushed at ReAwaken gatherings have prompted some Christian leaders to warn that America’s political and spiritual health is threatened by a toxic mix of Christian nationalism, lies about Trump’s loss to Joe Biden, and ahistorical views of the nation’s founding principle of the separation of church and state.The backlash against rightwing evangelicals is reshaping American politics and faith | Ruth BraunsteinRead moreSeveral well-known Christian leaders, including the president of the Christian social justice group Sojourners and the executive director of a major Baptist group, have called on American churches to speak out against the messages promoted at ReAwaken America rallies that have been held in Oklahoma, Arizona, Texas, California, South Carolina and other states.Other tour rallies, some of which have been held in religious spaces, are slated for New York and Virginia this summer and some local Christian leaders are being encouraged to publicly voice concerns about the dangerous rhetoric and messages they convey.“This ReAwaken tour is peddling dangerous lies about both the election and the pandemic,” Adam Russell Taylor, the president of Sojourners, told the Guardian. “Jesus taught us that the truth will set us free, and these lies hold people captive to these dangerous falsehoods. They also exacerbate the toxic polarization we’re seeing in both the church and the wider society.”Taylor added he was deeply concerned about “a conflation between Christianity and a nationalistic form of patriotism” at the “tour rallies which are promoting a more overt form of Christian nationalism”.Amanda Tyler, the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, which has organized Christians against Christian nationalism, said: “Christian nationalism is a threat to the church because those peddling it wrap this ideology in biblical language and imagery. Christian nationalism is wrong as a matter of Christian ethics. The Bible is not confined to a nation much less a party or list of policy positions.”She added: “The ReAwaken America tour is a gross distortion of Christianity and it’s up to Christian leaders in the areas the tour visits to speak out against this ideology.”The ReAwaken tour’s pro-Trump political messages mixed with Christian nationalism was on display at a two-day gathering in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in May that drew Flynn, Stone, Eric Trump and the rightwing pastor Mark Burns, who is running for a House seat in the state.Stone revved up the crowd with at times bizarre conspiratorial claims. “There is a satanic portal above the White House, you can see day and night. It exists. It is real. And it must be closed. And it will be closed by prayer,” he said.The “portal”, Stone told a rapt crowd, first appeared after Joe Biden “became president and it will be closed before he leaves”. Stone, a longtime Trump confidant, was convicted on three counts including obstruction during the Russia meddling investigations, but he was pardoned in late 2020 by Trump, who had earlier commuted his sentence.Burns, an ardent Trump backer, drew applause at the rally with blistering attacks on the LGBTQ community, top congressional Democrats, and even the GOP senator Lindsey Graham, a strong Trump ally.Known for his penchant for mixing religious messages with politics, Burns told another ReAwaken meeting in Ohio in February that God would “raise up armies” to help conservatives “shut down” Democratic-run America.“Are you ready to fight with me? Shout yeah!” Burns loudly exhorted the crowd. “Are you ready to stand with me? Shout yeah!”But retired Lt Gen Flynn, a staunch ally of Trump’s who told the rightwing network Newsmax in December 2020 that Trump should deploy the military to “rerun the election” in swing states Biden won, is the tour’s most highly promoted draw.At a ReAwaken event in Texas in November, for instance, Flynn sparked strong criticism by claiming that America should have just “one religion”.“If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion,” Flynn said. “One nation under God and one religion under God, right? All of us, working together.”At the South Carolina rally, Flynn proclaimed that the US has a “biblical destiny”, and posited that the US was built on a “set of Judeo-Christian principles”.Flynn’s views alarm Taylor of Sojourners. “Flynn has a warped understanding of religion and American history,” Taylor said.The ReAwaken tour was launched by a conservative Oklahoma talkshow host and entrepreneur named Clay Clark in tandem with Flynn, who briefly served as Trump’s first national security adviser. Flynn pleaded guilty twice to lying to the FBI about contacts he had with Russia’s ambassador before Trump took office, but in late 2020 Trump pardoned him.The Trump loyalist and multimillionaire Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock, told the Guardian last year the America Project, an advocacy group he founded that boasts Flynn as a special adviser and spokesman, put up “tens of thousands of dollars” to help launch the rallies in 2021, and that he has attended some himself.Flynn’s central role at the ReAwaken events was cited in a hard-hitting April op-ed in the Times of San Diego by the Rev Melinda Teter Dodge.“Tragically, late last month, proclaimed church leaders and religious zealots descended upon San Diego county, and twisted this scriptural truth for specific political purposes. In speaking to thousands of vulnerable attendees, this group spewed dangerous falsehood after falsehood about Covid-19 and the 2020 election,” she wrote.“The event at a church in San Marcos was the latest stop on disgraced, retired General Michael Flynn’s ‘ReAwaken America Tour,’ a nationwide series of megachurch engagements featuring a who’s who of far-right religious extremists, Trump aides, QAnon conspiracy theorists, and other reckless figures. At every stop along the way, the Christian nationalist tour has left in its wake a trail of dangerous disinformation that leads to bigotry, hate, and, at its most extreme, violence.”Teter Dodge added that a “staple” of the tours has been Pastor Greg Locke, “who has made a name for himself by peddling QAnon conspiracy theories from his pulpit, and even kicking people out of his church if they wore a mask. More recently, Locke has taken up the latest cause célèbre among the radical far-right – book burning.”Looking ahead to the fall elections, Taylor of Sojourners worries that the rhetoric of the ReAwaken events threatens voting rights.Taylor said he was “particularly alarmed by the ways this tour is promulgating and providing religious cover to the big lie that the last election was stolen. This big lie is eroding trust in elections and being exploited to justify and fuel efforts to erect new barriers across the country that restrict the right to vote.”TopicsUS politicsChristianityMichael FlynnReligionRoger StonenewsReuse this content More

The 1977 White House climate memo that should have changed the world Years before climate change was part of national discourse, this memo to the president predicted catastropheIn 1977 Star Wars hit movie theaters, New York City had a blackout that lasted 25 hours, and the Apple II personal computer went up for sale. It was also the year that a remarkable one-page memo was circulated at the very highest levels of US government.Years before climate change was part of national discourse, this memo outlined what was known – and feared – about climate change at the time. It was prescient in many ways. Did anyone listen?By July 1977, President Jimmy Carter had only been in office for seven months, but he had already built a reputation for being focused on environmental issues. For one, by installing solar panels on the White House. He had also announced a national renewable energy plan .“We must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy we will rely on in the next century,” he said in an address to the nation outlining its main goals.The climate memo arrived on his desk a few days after the Independence Day celebrations on July 4. It has the ominous title “Release of Fossil CO2 and the Possibility of a Catastrophic Climate Change.”One of the first thing that stands out is the stamp at the top, partially elided, saying THE PRESIDENT HAS SEEN.The memo’s author was Frank Press, Carter’s chief science adviser and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Press was a tall, serious, geophysicist who had grown up poor in a Jewish family in Brooklyn, and was described as “brilliant” by his colleagues. Before working with the Carter administration, he had been director of the Seismological Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, and had consulted for federal agencies including the Navy and NASA.“Carter had a great respect for Frank [Press] and for science,” said Stu Eizenstat, who served as Carter’s chief domestic policy adviser from 1977 to 1981.Press starts the memo by laying out the science of climate change as it was understood at the time.
Fossil fuel combustion has increased at an exponential rate over the last 100 years. As a result, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is now 12 percent above the pre-industrial revolution level and may grow to 1.5 to 2.0 times that level within 60 years. Because of the “greenhouse effect” of atmospheric CO2 the increased concentration will induce a global climatic warming of anywhere from 0.5 to 5°C.
These far-sighted assertions were in line with the climate science that originated the previous decade, when the US government funded major science agencies focused on space, atmospheric and ocean science. Research produced for President Lyndon B Johnson in 1965 found that billions of tons of “carbon dioxide is being added to the earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas”.Press’s memo was on the mark. In 2021, for the first time ever, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 reached 420PPM, the halfway point to the doubling of pre-industrial CO2 levels that Press posited.
The potential effect on the environment of a climatic fluctuation of such rapidity could be catastrophic and calls for an impact assessment of unprecedented importance and difficulty. A rapid climatic change may result in large scale crop failures at a time when an increased world population taxes agriculture to the limits of productivity.
Press was right. We have indeed seen the catastrophic effects of a climatic fluctuation, in the form of increasingly severe weather events including droughts, heatwaves, and hurricanes of greater intensity. Meanwhile, in many parts of the world heating has already stemmed increases in agricultural productivity, and large-scale food production crises are thought to be possible.
The urgency of the problem derives from our inability to shift rapidly to non-fossil fuel sources once the climatic effects become evident not long after the year 2000; the situation could grow out of control before alternate energy sources and other remedial actions become effective.
This is correct. By the 2000s, the effects of climate change had become apparent in some regions in the form of more deadly heat waves and stronger floods and droughts.
Natural dissipation of C02 would not occur for a millennium after fossil fuel combustion was markedly reduced.
This prediction by Press was actually debunked at least a decade ago. Scientists used to believe that some warming was “baked in”, but scientists have since found that as soon as CO2 emissions stop rising, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 levels off and slowly falls.
As you know this is not a new issue. What is new is the growing weight of scientific support which raises the CO2-climate impact from speculation to a serious hypothesis worthy of a response that is neither complacent nor panicky.
But there were other currents mitigating against the sort of response Press calls for. “​​The story of climate policy in the US, generally, is one missed opportunities and unjustifiable delay,” said Jack Lienke, author of the book Struggling for Air: Power Plants and the “War on Coal.”Many other issues may have seemed more pressing, or simply better understood. As he writes in Struggling for Air, “At a time when Americans were still dying somewhat regularly in acute, inversion-related pollution episodes, it is unsurprising that legislators were more concerned with the known harms of sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide than the uncertain, seemingly distant threat of climate change.”
The authoritative National Academy of Sciences has just alerted us that it will issue a public statement along these lines in a few weeks.
That public statement, released later that month, emphasized the importance of shifting away from fossil fuel energy and highlighted the urgency of starting to transition to new energy sources as soon as possible: “With the end of the oil age in sight, we must make long-term decisions as to future energy policies. One lesson we have been learning is that the time required for transition from one major source to another is several decades.”So what happened? When Press’s memo made it to the president’s desk, Jim Schlesinger, America’s first secretary of energy, also attached his own note in response:
​​My view is that the policy implications of this issue are still too uncertain to warrant Presidential involvement and policy initiatives.
Carter seems to have heeded this warning, and did not make much progress on climate change mitigation during his presidency. Yet he did sign some significant pieces of environmental legislation, including initiating the first federal toxic waste cleanups and creating the first fuel economy standards.A significant challenge facing Carter was his own contradictory energy aims. Despite his goal of encouraging alternative energy, he also felt there was a national security interest in boosting US oil production in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis.“We realized our dependence on foreign oil was dangerous and, very importantly, alternative energy was in its infancy,” Eizenstat said. “So Carter was both doing conservation and still encouraging more domestic oil and gas as a way of reducing dependence on foreign oil,” said Eizenstat. “As with all policy, you have conflicting goals.”Still, it seems possible that if Carter had been re-elected, the world might have been in a better position regarding climate impacts today. One of the first things Reagan did after winning the election in 1981 was take down the White House solar panels. Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry – whose scientists were already studying the ways that fossil fuels were changing the climate – started spending tens of millions of dollars sowing doubt about climate science.Did the Press memo accomplish anything at all? For one person it was in fact a “transformational moment” – this was Eizenstat himself. He says it was instrumental in his own future work on climate change, including his decision in 1997 to serve as the United States’s principal negotiator for the Kyoto global warming protocols.Those protocols set the stage for the first international effort to tackle climate policy on a global level. So even if Press’s memo had a muted impact at the time, his warning wasn’t entirely ignored.TopicsClimate crisisClimate crimesJimmy CarterUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

Bernie Sanders skewers Republican critic of ‘full-on socialism’ in Fox debate‘Is guaranteeing healthcare to all people socialistic?’ senator asks Lindsey Graham in stellar defense of political philosophy Fox News is, to put it mildly, not known for indulging progressive politics – but the rightwing news channel gave it a go on Monday, when Bernie Sanders appeared in a debate on the network’s sister channel, Fox Nation.AOC refuses to endorse Biden for 2024 as Democrats doubt his ability to win Read moreSanders, the Vermont senator, democratic socialist and two-time presidential candidate, took on Lindsey Graham, his Republican Senate colleague from South Carolina.Sanders gave an unfettered breakdown of Medicare for all, or a national public healthcare system, a living wage, and increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans.For Fox viewers it was a rare opportunity to hear a different perspective on policies which are regularly demonized by rightwingers Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, Fox News’ two most watched hosts.For Sanders, it was a chance to reach a new audience, and he wasted no time before diving into a signature issue – universal healthcare.“In the United States, Lindsey, we spend twice as much per capita on healthcare compared to the people of any other country, while major countries like Canada, the UK, Germany manage to supply healthcare to all their people,” Sanders said.“Why is that?” he continued. “Because they’re not having insurance companies ripping off the system.”Several polls have shown that a majority of Americans support Medicare for all, despite the Republican refrain that much of the US public is thrilled with their private health insurance.“The real question is what the American people want. And you know what the American people do want? They do want Medicare for all,” Sanders said.Bernie Sanders absolutely obliterating Lindsey Graham in this debate opener pic.twitter.com/K0N1JrfFV3— Mac (@GoodPoliticGuy) June 13, 2022
Medicare is the US government’s national healthcare system for seniors, and progressives want to expand its coverage to all and abolish private health insurance.“You talk about the joys and beauties of private insurance. Talk to the millions of workers who lost their private insurance during Covid,” Sanders said to Graham.Graham ran for the Republican nomination for president against Donald Trump in 2016 and was a sharp critic of Trump’s – then became one of his most ardent defenders, although the relationship between the pair has since soured.He accused Sanders of being out of touch.“America deserves better than this. We can do better than this but the path charted by Senator Sanders is full-on socialism,” Graham said, after a conversation about gas prices and rising inflation.“And it’s not going to fix America. We are not a socialist nation. There is a better way, I promise you this.”Graham did not give specifics on his better way.“If I’m chairman of any committee, hopefully the budget committee, I’ll sit down with Democrats and Republicans and find a way to fix our national debt,” he said.After being criticized by Graham for being a “socialist”, Sanders leaned into the political philosophy and offered an ardent defense.“Do you think raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour is socialistic? Do you think doing what every major country does – guaranteeing healthcare to all people – is socialistic? Do you think expanding Medicare to cover dental care is socialistic?” Sanders said.Sanders had previously appeared on Fox News for a “town hall” style event during his 2020 presidential campaign. That time, to the surprise of many, he was applauded by the Fox News live audience several times as he explained some of his progressive policy ideas.Monday’s debate came after a bipartisan group of senators announced they had come to a tentative agreement over minor potential gun control measures.A plan announced by Chris Murphy, a Democrat, and John Cornyn, a Republican, and supported by at least 10 Republican senators, would increase funding for school safety and mental health programs, and expand background checks for gun buyers under 21.The bill would not, however, ban assault-style weapons or even raise the age limit to buy them – something advocates for greater gun control insist is necessary.During the debate Sanders gave his tentative support to the legislation, but said it did not go far enough. It is time, Sanders said, for Congress to “stand up to the power of the NRA and pass real gun reform legislation”.“I come from a rural state. And you know, most people do not use AR-15s to hunt deer. These are weapons, military-type weapons, designed to kill people as quickly as possible,” Sanders said.“And as a nation we have to decide whether it is appropriate to do what virtually no other major country does: allow somebody to walk into a gun store and buy one of these weapons.”Graham said he had taken a different lesson.“You know, after New York, after Buffalo and after the shooting in Texas there’s a common thing: very disturbed people getting guns and doing terrible things with them,” Graham said. Graham said he owns an AR15, adding: “If you ever have to defend yourself, maybe a double barrel shotgun at your house if everything breaks down and the mob’s coming, [is] not enough. We’re not going to ban assault weapons.”Sanders and Graham unsurprisingly found little common ground, although they agreed change is required.“You’ve got to get new people in Washington,” said Graham, who has been in Congress for more than 26 years.Sanders offered a bigger vision.“I think most people, frankly, will tell you what they tell me: that the Congress is way, way out of touch with the needs of the American people,” Sanders said, adding: “We have a corrupt political system dominated by wealthy campaign contributors.”TopicsBernie SandersRepublicansUS politicsDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

Despite January 6 panel efforts to stamp out Trump’s big lie the myth rages on Republican party fuels false claim of stolen election as it seeks to surge back into power in November’s midterm elections The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection charged on Monday that Donald Trump “lit the fuse” that fueled the most violent assault on the US Capitol in more than two centuries with his groundless claim that the election was stolen.For those tuned in, the committee meticulously charted the origins and spread of Trump’s “big lie”, tapping a trove of evidence and interviews to show that the former president was told repeatedly that the election had been free and fair and peddled his myths anyway.But in Republican politics and the conservative media ecosystem, Trump’s myth of a stolen election rages on, uncontrolled in the Republican party as it seeks to surge back into power in November’s midterm elections.Roughly two-thirds of Republicans believe fraud helped Joe Biden win, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released ahead of the first hearing last week. Across the country, Republican election deniers are running for office and the lie is being used as the basis to pass scores of pieces of legislation restricting voting access.The January 6 panel is doing its best to counter that narrative. In a methodical presentation on Monday, the panel charted how the defeated former president kindled false claims of voter fraud as part of a conspiracy to remain in power against the electoral will of the American people.“This morning, we’ll tell the story of how Donald Trump lost an election, and knew he lost an election – and as a result of his loss decided to wage an attack on our democracy,” Congressman Bennie Thompson, chair of the committee and a Democrat from Mississippi, said opening Monday’s hearing.The violence on 6 January, when a mob of loyalist to the president overran the Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s victory, was a “direct and predictable result” of lies Trump told, Thompson said.During the hearing, the committee turned to the former president’s inner circle to argue that Trump, defeated and desperate, continued to push baseless claims about election fraud that he had been told repeatedly were false.“He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,” Bill Bar, the former attorney general, testified to the panel in a clip played during the hearing. “There was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were,” he added. At one point during the deposition, Barr laughs at the sheer absurdity of the claims, one of which involved a plot orchestrated by the former Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chávez. Chávez died in 2013.Barr said he told the president the claims of fraud were “bullshit”.Trump’s former campaign manager, Bill Stepien, testified to the committee that he knew their path to victory had all-but evaporated and sought to dissuade the then president from declaring victory prematurely. But Trump ignored his pleas for caution and instead heeded the advice of an “apparently inebriated” Rudy Giuliani to claim he won an election when it was increasingly clear he had not.Stepien was expected to appear in person on Monday, but abruptly pulled out because his wife went into labor. The ex-campaign manager, who remains close to Trump, had reportedly been subpoenaed to appear. The committee instead played extended clips from his recorded testimony.In the days that followed, Stepien said two factions developed within the campaign, his team and another led by Giuliani. His team, he said, became known as ‘Team Normal’”.The committee also alleged that Trump had duped his supporters into sending money so that his campaign could keep fighting to overturn the results in court. Some members on the panel have suggested that the revelation Trump misled his donors could perhaps shake their yet-unshakable fealty to the defeated president.“The big lie was also a big rip-off,” said Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat of California, who led the panel’s presentation on Monday.Breaking Trump’s hold on his supporters and the Republican party may be too tall a task for the committee. Even as Stepien helped the committee – and the country – better understand the tumultuous aftermath of the 2020 election, he is working to bring down the panel’s vice-chair, congresswoman Liz Cheney.Stepien serves as an adviser to Harriet Hageman, a Wyoming Republican running a Trump-fueled primary challenge against Cheney. The former president has made defeating Cheney a priority as part of a revenge-campaign against Republicans who defied his efforts to overturn the election results. Cheney’s unflinching pursuit of Trump has made her a pariah in her party – and may yet cost her her political career.Throughout the hearing, the committee sought to disprove Trump’s fictions, in some instances, claim by claim.“Dead people are voting. Indians are getting paid to vote. There’s lots of fraud going on here,” former acting attorney general Richard Donoghue said, recalling the litany of outlandish claims Trump made to him. Donoghue said he told Trump “flat out that much of the information he’s getting is false and/or is not supported by the evidence”.“There were so many of these allegations that when you gave him a very direct answer on one of them, he wouldn’t fight us on it, but he’d move to another allegation,” he said.In another recorded interview with the panel, Eric Herschmann, a White House lawyer, recalled a phone call with John Eastman, one of the president’s lawyers whom a judge has said conspired with Trump to overturn the election.“I said to him, Are you out of your effing mind?” Herschmann recalled. “I said I… only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth for now on: orderly transition.”Among the witnesses on Monday was Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News Channel political editor who declared on election night that Biden had won Arizona, once a Republican stronghold.Stirewalt told the panel that Trump had no reasonable basis for declaring victory on election night, as the former president did. To win, Trump would have needed the tally in three states to dramatically shift in his favor, the former news editor explained, an outcome so unlikely “you’re better off to play the Powerball”.Presently, the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are about1 in 292,201,338.Asked who won the 2020 election, Stirewalt replied with the gusto of a broadcaster on election night: “Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr of the great state of Delaware.”“That’s the bottom line,” Thompson replied.But for many, it is not. Across the US, Republicans are running for office fueling the myth of a stolen election and they are likely to pay little heed to the facts and evidence gathered by the committee.In Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano, who was a leader in efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state and put Trump’s election lies at the heart of his campaign, won the Republican primary for governor. The committee subpoenaed Mastriano over his involvement in planning and organizing the January 6 rally that preceded the Capitol assault.If elected, he would have extraordinary control over the election administration in a critical swing state. On Monday, as the hearing was getting underway in Washington, Mastriano’s campaign announced that it had brought on former Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis, who became the public face of his brazen legal efforts to overturn the presidential elections.In a statement, Ellis vowed – apparently without irony – to help Mastriano “restore integrity to our elections”.TopicsJan 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS politicsanalysisReuse this content More