US Politics

Kellyanne Conway takes aim at Bannon in book but hits Trump in processFormer senior counselor to Donald Trump says president was ‘too trusting of others who lacked transparency or talent’ In her new memoir, Kellyanne Conway lavishes abuse on Steve Bannon, calling the former White House strategist a “leaking dirigible” and an “unpaternal, paternalistic bore of a boor” more concerned with his own image than serving Donald Trump.The ‘straight, white, Christian, suburban mom’ taking on Republicans at their own gameRead moreBut in doing so, the former senior counselor to the ex-US president criticises Trump himself, otherwise a notable escapee from her book.“One of Trump’s biggest selling points,” Conway writes in one of many takedowns of Bannon, “was his refreshing lack of political experience. But the flip side of that quality was his occasional blind spots when it came to personnel decisions and political endorsements.”Trump’s endorsements are the focus of fierce attention. In Georgia primaries on Tuesday his candidate for governor, David Perdue, seems doomed to defeat while his Senate candidate, Herschel Walker, is widely deemed unsuitable for the role.Conway continues: “[Trump] was often too trusting of others who lacked transparency or talent, and insufficiently skeptical of those who were pushing the wrong people as candidates for office or as colleagues in the administration. I won some of those arguments and lost some.”Conway’s book, Here’s the Deal, has caused arguments since excerpts were reported last week. It is published in the US on Tuesday.The New Jersey Republican operative was both the first woman to manage a winning presidential campaign and a relatively rare senior staffer to last four years in the chaotic Trump White House.Her avoidance of criticising Trump has been widely reported. Her criticism of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and chief adviser, and her version of the strain placed on her marriage by her husband George Conway’s open disdain for Trump, have also been widely discussed.She charges that others in the Trump White House leaked to the media consistently.“As a frequent guest in mixed political company,” she writes, “I’d been much more transparent and much more reserved in my dealings than the leaking Bannon dirigible hovering about, and the taxpayer-funded Kushner image-curation machine stationed inside and outside the White House.”Bannon has been a source for multiple tell-alls, but Conway’s protestations of discretion might ring hollow to some.As the Guardian wrote in its review of Team of Vipers, a 2019 memoir by a former Trump aide: “[Cliff] Sims spills the beans on Conway repeatedly trashing Jared Kushner, Reince Priebus, Steve Bannon and Sean Spicer to the mainstream media, while recounting to the press ostensibly private conversations with the president.”Conway says her relationship with Bannon began well, though she found him to be “a strange dude, gruff, unkempt, prone to sweeping historical assertions and bold declarations about the current state of politics”.The two were introduced by Rebekah Mercer, a far-right mega-donor whose ownership of Cambridge Analytica, a Bannon-linked data firm which became enmeshed in scandal, remains unexamined by Conway.“Our arranged marriage got off to a promising start” before the 2016 election, Conway says of Bannon, as the two operatives “tried to shake up some stuck-in-the-mud Republicans and introduce fresh names to the candidate hunt”.‘I made Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’: meet the data war whistleblowerRead moreShe also says Bannon urged her to take a job in Trump’s White House, saying: “Fuck, girl, c’mon: you gotta do this.”But Conway says that in the White House, Bannon’s “main job seemed to be building his own fiefdom”. She also says Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, warned her Bannon was on his way out.Bannon left the White House in August 2017, amid uproar over Donald Trump’s courting of far-right activists with whom Bannon remains closely associated.Bannon is the only Trump aide to face a criminal charge related to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. Charged with contempt of Congress, he has pleaded not guilty.TopicsKellyanne ConwayTrump administrationSteve BannonUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

US progressives show strength in primaries and predict more wins aheadStronger-than-expected showing in elections has energized the movement and set the stage, they hope, for more successes In the battle for control of the Democratic party, progressives are increasingly confident they are winning. That’s how they explain the record sums of Super Pac money targeting their candidates in nominating contests for safely Democratic seats.“There’s a set of people who are uncomfortable with a new brand of politics,” said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the progressive Working Families party. “They’re trying to set the clock back. But the genie’s outta the bottle.”So far this election cycle, progressives have a mixed record. But a stronger-than-expected showing in last week’s primaries has energized the movement and set the stage, they hope, for even more success this summer.In Pennsylvania, state representative Summer Lee overcame a deluge of outside spending to win her congressional primary. Lee was declared the winner after three days of counting. She tweeted: “$4.5 mill” with a fire and trash can emoji.Oregon progressives cheered the victory of Andrea Salinas, who also went up against a crush of big money in one of the most expensive House Democratic primaries in the country. Meanwhile, the seven-term Oregon congressman Kurt Schrader, whose conservative politics drew the left’s ire, appears to be on the verge of losing his seat to progressive challenger Jamie McLeod-Skinner, though results have been delayed by a ballot-printing problem.US primary elections: voters to test Trump’s power over Republican party – liveRead moreAnd in what will be one of the cycle’s most competitive Senate races, John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s iconoclastic, liberal lieutenant governor, beat Congressman Conor Lamb, a rising star of the center-left.The next test of progressive political power comes on Tuesday, in a Texas runoff election between Congressman Henry Cueller, a conservative Democrat backed by party leadership, and Jessica Cisneros, a progressive immigration lawyer endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. And after that, there are competitive intra-party primaries in Illinois, New York and Michigan.“We’re not doing any victory laps,” Mitchell said. “If anything, those losses and the wins have redoubled our commitment and focus.”Moderates see the cycle very differently.They point to a trio of House races last week in North Carolina and Kentucky where the more moderate candidate won handily. Those victories came just two weeks after the Democratic congresswoman Shontel Brown won a fiercely contested rematch in Ohio against Nina Turner, a progressive activist who worked on Sanders’ presidential campaigns.“People who are far outside the mainstream of the Democratic conference make it harder for moderates to run in swing districts because their ideas and their rhetoric are used against people like Abigail Spanberger,” said Matt Bennett, a co-founder of the center-left thinktank Third Way, referring to the Virginia congresswoman who singled out progressives for costing the party seats in 2020.Bennett said it was important to distinguish between progressives. He argued that candidates who are “liberal but not radical”, such as McLeod-Skinner in Oregon, pose little risk to swing-state Democrats.Instead, “we are worried about the Squad”, Bennett said, the group of progressive congresswomen that includes Ocasio-Cortez, “because the people in that wing of the party do not regard it as part of their duty as Democrats to help ensure that we have majorities”.It’s a charge that angers progressives. Following Sanders’ lead in 2020, they united behind Biden to oust Donald Trump in 2020 and then spent the past year and a half working with congressional leaders and the White House to pass the president’s economic agenda. And yet progressives are the ones being pummeled by outside spending.A number of contentious Democratic contests have been shaped by Super Pacs, like the one formed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as Aipac, another supported by the LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and another backed by a crypto-billionaire.Much – though not all – of the outside money has been spent in support of moderate candidates, including in Texas, where Cuellar, the nine-term congressman, is in the fight of his political life.“This is a David-and-Goliath sort of battle,” Mitchell said.The rash of spending has only exacerbated tensions between the party’s ideological factions. In a sign of progressives’ building resentment, Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ former campaign manager, warned that progressives could launch third-party candidates in swing districts to scuttle centrist Democrats’ chances.The suggestion infuriated Bennett, who called it the “most irresponsible thing I’ve seen a Democrat say … maybe ever, particularly in the face of a Republican party that has lost its ever-loving mind.”Though still early in the primary season, progressives appear poised to expand their numbers in Congress. Still, not every closely fought intra-party battle has fallen neatly along ideological lines.Oregon’s Schrader, a former leader of the conservative Blue Dog coalition, angered Democrats in the state after his vote against a provision that would allow Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs. Local Democratic leaders voted to endorse his challenger, McLeod-Skinner, sharply breaking with tradition.In Texas, however, the battle lines are clearly drawn.Pundits there think the south Texas runoff between Cuellar and Cisneros will prove to be a bellwether of the Democratic mood in a political landscape that increasingly favors Republicans. Democrats have razor-thin majorities in Congress, and the party in power historically loses in the president’s first midterm election.Democrats are also struggling to outrun Biden’s low approval ratings, weighed down by inflation and widespread frustration with Washington.Since Cisneros forced Cuellar into a runoff earlier this year, the race has been reshaped by a draft supreme court opinion indicating the justices are prepared to overturn a constitutional right to an abortion.Cuellar is one of the only Democrats left in Congress who is against abortion. Cisneros, by contrast, has cast herself as a defender of reproductive rights in a state that has effectively banned abortion.They have also clashed on immigration. Whereas Cuellar staunchly criticizes the Biden administration’s immigration policies, appearing frequently on Fox News to air his grievances with the president’s handling of the border, Cisneros has advocated for a more progressive stance in that sector.No matter what happens on Tuesday in Texas, progressives believe they have made progress elevating candidates they say will excite the party’s base in November.In Kentucky, long a Republican stronghold, Democrats nominated Charles Booker, an unabashedly progressive ex-state lawmaker who would be the state’s first black senator. It’s a shift from two years ago, when he surprised the party establishment by nearly defeating its chosen candidate in the Senate primary that cycle.Booker now faces an uphill battle to unseat the entrenched Republican senator Rand Paul. But he says his progressive Kentucky New Deal agenda is popular with voters of both parties. It’s the partisan labels and political culture wars that get in the way.“The truth of the matter is, the people of Kentucky want real progress,” Booker said. “It’s just that no one listens to us.“The policies that I lift up, the issues that I fight for, they’re not radical and they don’t come from some national consultant. This comes from my lived experience of living the struggle that most Kentuckians know well.”TopicsDemocratsUS politicsTexasPennsylvaniaOregonnewsReuse this content More

Since May 3, 2022, when Politico reported that the Supreme Court was planning to strike down Roe v. Wade, many Christians have celebrated the prospect of an America where abortion is not a constitutionally protected right – or is someday banned entirely.

Meanwhile, other conservative Christians have been working on a related target: limiting access to some contraceptives.

In July 2020, when the Supreme Court ruled that organizations with “sincerely held religious or moral objection” are not obligated to provide contraceptive coverage to their employees, many conservative Christians applauded. Six years before, the evangelical owners of crafting chain Hobby Lobby took their objections to covering the IUD in their health insurance plans all the way to the Supreme Court. Hobby Lobby argued – incorrectly, according to most medical authorities – that it was a form of abortion, and therefore they should not have to cover employees’ health insurance for it. The justices sided with the chain’s owners.

Yet as access to both abortion and contraception comes under threat, the vast majority of Protestants use or have used some form of contraception. Their actions are supported by almost 100 years of pastoral advocacy on the issue. In my work as a scholar of religous studies, gender and sexuality, I have researched the Protestant leaders who campaigned to make contraception respectable, and therefore widely acceptable, in the mid-20th century.

History, I have found, provides a different story about the relationship between Protestants and birth control.

‘Responsible parenthood’

As new contraceptive options emerged in the first two-thirds of the 20th century, from the diaphragm to the birth control pill, Christian leaders wrestled with what to think. Many came to see birth control as a moral good that would allow married couples to have satisfying sex lives, while protecting women from the health risks of frequent pregnancies. They hoped it could ensure that couples would not have more children than they could care for, emotionally and economically.

Women with children stand outside Sanger Clinic, the first birth control clinic in United States, in Brooklyn, New York in 1916.
Circa Images/GHI/Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

They looked inward, considering the consequences of birth control for their own communities, and hoped that “planned” or “responsible” sex would create healthy families and decrease divorce. They also looked outward, thinking about birth control’s wider implications, at a time of widespread concern that the global population was rising too quickly to handle.

By the time the pill came on the market in the 1960s, liberal and even some conservative Protestants were advocating for birth control using new theological ideas about “responsible parenthood.”

“Responsible parenthood” reframed debates about family size around “Christian duty.” To be responsible in parenting was not only to avoid having more children than you could afford, nurture and educate. It also meant considering responsibilities outside the home toward churches, society and humanity.

Protestant leaders supporting contraception argued that the best kind of family was a father with a steady job and a homemaker mother, and that birth control could encourage this model, because smaller families could maintain a comfortable lifestyle on one income. They also hoped that contraception would help couples stay together by allowing them to have satisfying sex lives.

Multiple denominations endorsed birth control. In 1958, for example, the Anglican Communion stated that family planning was a “primary obligation of Christian marriage,” and chastised parents “who carelessly and improvidently bring children into the world, trusting in an unknown future or a generous society to care for them.”

The big picture

Religious leaders’ support for “responsible parenthood” was not just about deliberately creating the kind of Christian families they approved of. It was also about heading off the horrors of population explosion – a fear very much front of mind in mid-century America.

In the middle of the 20th century, with increased access to vaccines and antibiotics, more children were living to adulthood and life expectancies were rising. Protestant leaders feared this so-called population bomb would outstrip the Earth’s food supply, leading to famine and war.

In 1954, when the global population stood at about 2.5 billion, Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick, one of the most prominent Protestant voices of the age, framed overpopulation as one of the world’s “basic problems,” and the birth control pill, which was then being developed, as the best potential solution.

Richard Fagley, a minister who served on the World Council of Church’s Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, argued that in family planning, science had provided Christians with a new venue for moral responsibility. Medical knowledge, Fagley wrote, is “a liberating gift from God, to be used to the glory of God, in accordance with his will for men.”

These “responsible parenthood” ideas held that religious couples had a responsibility to be good stewards of the earth by not having more children than the planet could support. In the context of marriage, contraception was viewed as moral, shoring up a particular form of Christian values.

Yesterday’s arguments

These ideas about “good” and “bad” families often rested on assumptions about race and gender that reproductive rights advocates find troubling today.

Early in the 20th century, predominantly white, Protestant clergy were very interested in increasing access to contraception for the poor, who were often Catholic or Jewish immigrants or people of color. Some scholars have argued that early support for contraception was predominantly about eugenics, particularly before World War II. Among some white leaders, there was concern about so-called race suicide: the racist fear that “they” would be overwhelmed.

Apart from some eugenicists, however, most of these clergy wanted to give people access to contraception in order to create “healthy” families, regardless of income level. Yet many were unable or unwilling to see how they were promoting a narrow view of the ideal family, and how that marginalized poor communities and people of color – themes I am studying in my current book project.

Moreover, many proponents were advocating for women’s health, but not reproductive freedom. Their priority was setting women up for success to attain their ideal of the middle-class, Christian motherhood. With fewer children, some hoped, families would be able to get by on just a husband’s salary, meaning more women at home raising children.

A battle won – and lost?

Over the decades, Protestant leaders have, in large part, disappeared from pro-birth control arguments.

There are many reasons. Mid-century agricultural technologies reduced fears of overpopulation – which have only recently been reawoken by the climate crisis. Meanwhile, mainline Protestant churches, and their public influence, are shrinking. Conservative leaders eventually grew concerned that birth control would lead to more working women, not fewer. And since the 1970s, evangelicals have grown increasingly opposed to abortion, which was increasingly linked to birth control through the broad term “family planning.”

In other words, since the “population bomb” was no longer ticking, contraception no longer seemed like such an urgent necessity – and some of its other implications troubled conservatives, breaking an almost pan-Protestant alliance.

Meanwhile, liberal Protestants had so embraced contraception that they no longer viewed it as turf that needed defending. Today, 99% of American girls and women between the ages of 15 and 44 who have ever had sex use or have used a contraceptive method. Reproductive rights advocates turned their attention to abortion rights – largely leaving religious views on birth control to their opponents. More

The American right is whitewashing Hungary’s nasty, autocratic regimeJan-Werner MüllerUS conservatives are signaling their commitment to authoritarianism loud and clear by holding this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Budapest – the first-ever outside the US In political analysis, sometimes the hardest thing is to see what’s staring you right in the face. Putin put in writing what he was going to do this spring – we just could not believe it, or we thought we’d prove our savviness by identifying some completely counterintuitive twist to the story of an invasion foretold. A similar challenge is posed by American conservatives communicating their commitment to authoritarianism loud and clear by holding this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac) in Budapest – the first ever outside the US: the autocratic leader of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, is the main attraction, with plenty of European far-right party leaders as supporting acts. Could these American ingenues abroad just be duped by a leader intent on selling his kleptocratic autocracy as the last bastion of authentic conservatism or, as he likes to put it, real “Christian Democracy”? Maybe there’s some twist? Or perhaps, as Cpac’s hero Trump once proclaimed, it is what it is: from Tucker Carlson down, these figures are aware that Hungary has exited the democratic world; they just repeat the Orbán regime’s talking points when confronted with evidence for it. They end up cheerfully endorsing Vladimir Putin’s closest ally in Europe.Orbán has long tried to promote his regime internationally as a model of “illiberal democracy.” The idea is that the leader enjoys overwhelming support from the people, while implementing a decidedly anti-liberal agenda in matters of immigration and social policy: rewarding people financially for procreation, legally cementing traditional notions of marriage and affirming the supreme value of the nation-state against “globalists” allegedly “opening all borders.” Such a stance has resonated with conservatives who felt that the right kept suffering endless culture war defeats in western Europe and North America; the ideology espoused by the self-proclaimed “plebeian” Orbán has also provided a template for a newly fashioned “national conservatism” that seeks to combine nationalism with state intervention in economy and morality.Orbán’s self-declared illiberalism, just like Putin’s attacks on “obsolete liberalism,” laid a trap: instead of focusing on his party’s systematic capture of the state and economy – creating an oligarchy-friendly autocracy that in many ways resembles Russia – critics were dragged (or belligerently entered) on to Orbán’s preferred battleground: culture and morality. He and his allies could triumphantly charge that the very liberals celebrating diversity and tolerance were zealots determined to destroy conservative ways of life. Never mind that “liberal nihilists” (Orbán’s words) in Brussels do not dictate to EU member states how to regulate abortion or, for that matter, immigration – like so many far-right populists, Orbán has been adept at creating a community defined by imaginary common victimhood. Those allegedly intent on victimizing Hungary could change over time – one year, it was migrants, then George Soros, then Brussels. What had to remain constant was a sense of mortal threat, where national existence is at stake day and night.Hungary (and Poland) have been lavished with attention by conservatives who, from the safety of prestigious chairs at North American universities, lament their status as victims of “cancel culture” and the alleged “soft totalitarianism” of the US left: the land of the Magyars became an anti-liberals’ Disneyland – where you can still tell who’s a man and who’s a woman! – or even, as a Hungarian government official put it, a “conservative safe space.” Voices that are ubiquitous in western debates – like British-born historian Niall Ferguson – would visit Budapest to bemoan the fate of free speech in US academia, suggesting that the situation had started to resemble Stalinist Poland. Such a performance of victimhood was all the more remarkable because it was staged in front of the very prime minister who had forced Hungary’s best university to leave (inviting a Chinese university to open a branch instead), radically reduced media pluralism (leaving a few tiny liberal outlets in place for the sake of plausible deniability) and reshaped the cultural scene in the name of promoting nationalist values.It is tempting not to see things for what they are: perhaps all these intellectuals are just what used to be known as “useful idiots” – similar to the polit-tourists who went to the Soviet Union and came back with good news about workers joyously building socialism. But the latter were usually duped – whereas at least some of the conservatives enjoying their pálinka in one of Budapest’s Scruton cafes (named after the conservative British philosopher Roger Scruton) appear to know full well what is happening in their new favorite ideological holiday destination. They are simply willing to sacrifice democracy for the realization of their favorite Catholic natural law precepts, or for stopping what Orbán, among many other conspiracy theorists, identifies as the “great replacement” – substituting Muslims for the last real Christians on the old continent.Critics are usually brushed aside with the charge that left-liberal Orbánophobes just happen to be frustrated that their desire for a “woke autocracy” remains unrealized in a far-away country about which they know little; to boot, they are accused of being not just intolerant, but, deep down, anti-democrats: after all, how can they call a man who has won four consecutive elections decisively (generating a two-thirds majority in parliament on each occasion) an autocrat? What’s more, how can they mind the fact that he is building up a middle-class constituency (or so the justification of corruption by Orbán’s in-house intellectuals runs) – or, if that doesn’t sound right, how about the fact that everyone is corrupt anyway, in eastern Europe?If such rationalizations sound curiously Trumpist, that’s because they are. After all, the conservative and religious fellow travelers of the 45th president also were never short of reasons to excuse his power- and money-grabbing. Nobody is denying that Orbán has genuine followers, just like Trump does. Yet Orbán’s claim to a great democratic mandate is dented by the fact that recent elections, while being free, have been utterly unfair: the main opposition candidate was literally given five minutes on state TV during the entire campaign; state resources were shamelessly used to promote the governing party; and, not least, the electoral system is rigged in the incumbents’ favor. Contrary to the cliche of a crazy left cancelling anyone who disagrees, the problem is not that states cannot set their own immigration policies, or that there can be no debate about family policy – it’s that Orbán has unleashed one hate campaign after another, most recently with a government “protect the children” campaign associating homosexuality with pedophilia.Had Trump ever built a political theme park, it may well have resembled Orbánistan. Hungary provides a preview of plans for the US – if one cares to look.
Jan-Werner Mueller teaches at Princeton and is a Guardian US columnist. His most recent book is Democracy Rules
TopicsUS politicsOpinionRepublicansViktor OrbánHungarycommentReuse this content More

InterviewThe ‘straight, white, Christian, suburban mom’ taking on Republicans at their own gameDavid Smith in WashingtonMallory McMorrow’s riposte to a hurtful slander by a colleague in the Michigan state senate that she wanted to ‘groom’ children went viral and has been hailed as a midterms blueprint for Democrats More

Capitol rioter who sprayed police with fire extinguisher sentenced to three yearsMatthew Ryan Miller from Maryland draped himself in a far right-affiliated flag and used a barricade as a ladder to scale walls A Maryland man who draped himself in a far right-affiliated flag and sprayed a fire extinguisher at police during the deadly Capitol attack on January 6 has been sentenced to nearly three years in prison, according to federal court records.Matthew Ryan Miller, 23, pleaded guilty in February to felony obstruction of an official proceeding – that day’s joint congressional session to certify Joe Biden’s win over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election – as well as assaulting, resisting or impeding police officers.At a hearing on Monday, Miller was sentenced to two years and nine months. Judge Randolph Moss also ordered Miller to spend two years on probation after his release and to pay $2,000 in restitution.New York judge’s son who stormed US Capitol gets prison sentenceRead moreFederal prosecutors had asked the judge for a sentence of four years and three months. Seeking leniency for his client, Miller’s attorney, A Eduardo Balarezo, argued that the defendant was abusing alcohol and marijuana and therefore was not thinking logically on the day of the Capitol riots.“Matthew is a young man who made a terrible decision,” Balarezo wrote in a court filing ahead of the sentencing. “He recognizes that his personal conduct and participation in the riot were not born of a rational decision but rather were fueled by alcohol and marijuana abuse.“He fully accepts responsibility for what he has done and is not making excuses.”Balarezo also condemned Trump’s claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him by electoral fraudsters as “lies” that drove Miller to join other Trump supporters in the nation’s capital on the day the riots occurred because he thought “it would be cool to be part of history”.According to prosecutors, Miller had traveled from his home in Cooksville, Maryland, and donned a black cowboy hat and a Washington Capitals jersey. He also tied around his neck the flag of Maryland and the Gadsden flag, which shows a hissing snake on a yellow background and is popular with far-right extremists.A summary of the case endorsed by Miller said he used a metal barrier as a ladder to climb a Capitol wall before urging others to help him push against police, waving his hand and shouting, “Come on,” as well as “One, two, three, push!” while his companions yelled, “Heave! Ho!” and rhythmically pressed on towards a tunnel entrance being guarded by officers.In the tunnel, Miller sprayed a fire extinguisher at officers, prosecutors wrote in records. Another mob member, Robert Palmer, picked up that extinguisher and sprayed it at officers, before tossing it at them. Palmer pleaded guilty to a role in the riot and got a prison sentence of five years and three months.Proud Boys member pleads guilty to role in US Capitol attackRead moreThere was evidence Miller had been to at least one rally staged by the Proud Boys, a far-right group classified by the FBI as “extremist”, who had members at the forefront of the Capitol attack. Yet prosecutors did not provide any evidence or allege that Miller was working with the Proud Boys that day, though they noted that he did belong to an organization which named itself the Patriotic American Cowboys.A bipartisan Senate report linked seven deaths to the Capitol attack. More than 840 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the January 6 riot, and nearly 300 of them have pleaded guilty, largely to misdemeanors. About 160 of them had been sentenced entering this month. The Associated Press contributed to this report.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Supreme court guts lifeline for prisoners who claim wrongful convictionsDecision bars federal courts from hearing new evidence not presented in a state court as a result of ineffective legal counsel The US supreme court on Monday gutted constitutional protections that for years have provided a federal lifeline to innocent prisoners facing prolonged incarceration or even execution following wrongful convictions stemming from poor legal counsel given to them by the states.In a 6 to 3 ruling, the newly-dominant rightwing majority of the nation’s highest court barred federal courts from hearing new evidence that was not previously presented in a state court as a result of the defendant’s ineffective legal representation.The decision means that prisoners will no longer have recourse to federal judges even when they claim they were wrongfully convicted because their lawyers failed to conduct their cases properly.The decision eviscerated the supreme court’s own precedent in a move that the three liberal justices called “illogical” and “perverse”. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor slammed the decision, warning it would leave “many people … to face incarceration or even execution without any meaningful chance to vindicate their right to counsel”.The ruling in Shinn v Ramirez was written by Clarence Thomas, the rightwing justice who has come to the fore as a result of the court’s sharp shift to the right following Donald Trump’s three appointments. He was supported by all five other conservative justices, including the chief justice, John Roberts.In his opinion, Thomas presented the case as one of states’ rights. He said that federal courts should not be allowed to override the states’ “core power to enforce criminal law”.That continues to be the case, the majority ruled, even where defendants are given bad legal advice by counsel provided for them by the very same states that are condemning them to long prison sentences or even execution.In future, they will have no recourse to a federal court to try and reverse their wrongful conviction.The case before the justices arose after state officials in Arizona petitioned the supreme court to prevent two of the state’s death row inmates – one with a strong case of proclaimed innocence, the other with a history of family abuse – from seeking relief in federal court from capital punishment.The state argued that the condemned men should not be allowed to present new evidence to a federal judge when they had failed to do so previously in state court.Lawyers for the condemned men pointed out that they had only failed to present the evidence in state court because the legal counsel they had been assigned by the state was woefully inadequate.If they were blocked from petitioning a federal court, the men would in effect be sent to the death chamber simply because incompetent lawyers had missed a filing deadline or failed to uncover a glaring truth.Monday’s majority ruling prompted an outpouring of angry and anguished criticism from innocence rights groups and death penalty experts.The Innocence Project said that overturning wrongful convictions was never easy, and that “today’s supreme court decision makes it that much harder to secure justice for wrongly-convicted people”.Thomas’s opinion also overturns previous supreme court rulings, in an abrogation of the court’s own adherence to the principle of stare decisis – that is, being faithful to precedent. In 2012 the supreme court ruled in Martinez v Ryan that prisoners could have access to federal court in cases where they had suffered from ineffective legal counsel in the state courts.“The supreme court seems hell-bent on disrespecting precedent and rolling back rights,” said Janai Nelson, president of LDF, America’s first civil and human rights law organization.In her dissenting opinion, Sotomayor decried the ruling. “This decision is perverse. It is illogical,” she wrote.Sotomayor argued that under the court’s own precedent, prisoners cannot be held accountable – and effectively punished – for “their attorneys’ failures to present claims in state court”.She concluded that as a result of the majority decision from the nine-member supreme court bench, the Sixth Amendment to the US constitution’s guarantee that criminal defendants have the right to effective legal counsel at trial “is now an empty one”.In future, she said, prisoners who have had poor legal assistance would have no relief. “The responsibility for this devastating outcome lies not with Congress, but with this court.”TopicsUS supreme courtUS prisonsLaw (US)US politicsnewsReuse this content More

Joe Biden is warning Americans that the fight against inflation is “going to be a haul”, and that relief for soaring prices of goods, services and especially gasoline is unlikely to be immediate.But the president, speaking in Tokyo earlier today as he launched a new trade deal with 12 Indo-Pacific nations, told reporters that he doesn’t believe a recession is “inevitable”.Biden is acutely aware that the inflation crisis is uppermost in voters’ minds ahead of November’s midterm elections. There was little comfort for him in a bleak new CBS poll released Monday that finds 69% of the country thinks the economy is bad, and 77% saying they’re “pessimistic” about the cost of goods and services in the coming months.“This is going to be a haul. This is going to take some time,” Biden told reporters in Tokyo. In response to a reporter’s question specifically about a recession, Biden said he did not think it was “inevitable”. With his own approval ratings at the lowest point of his presidency, Biden is under pressure to try to reverse the situation and avoid Democrats losing control of one, or both chambers of Congress ion November’s midterms. That he is focused on the crisis back home while on tour in Asia would appear to back up his assertion last week that inflation was his “top domestic priority”. Critics have been quick to point out that, last summer, Biden and acolytes including treasury secretary Janet Yellen were insistent that high inflation would likely only be temporary.But it has continued to spiral, with the annual inflation rate still close to a 40-year high according to figures earlier this month. My colleague Lauren Gambino has this look at how the president is attempting to tackle inflation as the clock runs down on the midterms. The message for voters seems to be that if you think things are bad now, Republicans at the wheel would be much worse:Biden pitches Democrats as saviors for US economy ahead of midterm electionsRead moreIt’s a wrap on Monday’s US politics blog. Thanks for joining us.Joe Biden sought to allay rising fears of a recession in the US, but admitted during a press conference in Tokyo that the fight against inflation and soaring prices “is going to be a haul”.But it was the president’s comments on Taiwan, and his pledge that the US would defend the island if it was attacked by China, that raised eyebrows and caused some confusion. White House aides were forced to step in and insist nothing had changed in the US approach to China.Here’s what else we followed:
Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis suffered defeat at the appeals court over his law attempting to ban social media companies from removing politicians, and fining them $250,000 a day if they did.
The House ethics committee is launching an inquiry into allegations that extremist Republican congressman Madison Cawthorn improperly promoted a cryptocurrency in which he had a financial interest, and engaged in an improper relationship with a staffer.
The Washington DC attorney general is suing Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg over “data harvesting” related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
A Covid-19 vaccine for children younger than five appears closer after Pfizer-BioNTech said clinical trials showed three low doses generated a strong immune response, and was safe and well-tolerated.
The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol is expected to stage six public hearings in June on how Donald Trump and some allies broke the law as they sought to overturn the 2020 election result.
Please join us again tomorrow on a big day for US politics, including intriguing midterm primary elections in Georgia, Texas and several other states.Water restrictions are coming to California, the state’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom warned Monday, if residents do not drastically reduce usage during an ongoing severe drought.“We all have to be more thoughtful about how to make every drop count,” Newson said in a statement about his meeting today with leaders of California’s largest urban water providers.“Californians made significant changes since the last drought but we have seen an uptick in water use, especially as we enter the summer months”.Until now, the agencies have had the power to set rules for water use in the cities and towns they supply, the Associated Press says, even as California enters its third year of severe drought.But Newsom says the lack of significant rain and snow from January to March, this year the driest in at least a century, and Californians not responding to his earlier calls for water conservation, are forcing a rethink. A spokesperson for Newsom’s office said the administration would reassess conservation progress in “a few weeks”. Read more:California water use leaps 19% in March, amid one of the driest months on record Read moreAnother day, another scandal for outgoing North Carolina congressman Madison Cawthorn.The US House ethics committee is investigating allegations that Cawthorn may have improperly promoted a cryptocurrency in which he had a financial interest that he didn’t disclose, and engaged in an improper relationship with a staffer in his office, a statement from the panel said Monday. Democratic Texas congresswoman Veronica Escobar will serve as the chairwoman of the panel leading the investigation, and Republican Mississippi congressman Michael Guest will be its ranking member, the statement added. The committee’s statement contained no other details into the allegations against Cawthorn.A pro-Donald Trump firebrand, Cawthorn has had his seat in the US House for one term but last week conceded defeat in a Republican primary challenge from North Carolina state legislator Chuck Edwards. His term, which began in 2021, is due to expire this upcoming January before giving way to the victor of the midterm election on 8 November. Edwards’ Democratic rival in that race is Jasmine Beach-Ferrara.Several Republican leaders abandoned Cawthorn’s side after he alleged on a podcast that he’d gotten invites to orgies during his time in Washington and had seen leading but unnamed political heavyweights in the nation’s capital abuse cocaine. He also drew ire from some quarters after calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy a “thug” following Russia’s invasion of his country in February.Furthermore, police stopped Cawthorn, 26, on driving citations three times, and he was caught with guns at airport checkpoints at least twice since last year, including last month. And videos during the primary campaign’s final weeks depicted Cawthorn in sexually suggestive poses.After conceding his loss, Cawthorn went on Instagram and called for “dark forces” of former president Trump’s Make America Great Again movement to take revenge against the Republican establishment. He wrote that he was “on a mission now to expose those who says and promise one thing yet legislate and work towards another, self-profiteering, globalist goal.”“The time for genteel politics as usual has come to an end,” Cawthorn added in his post, which thanked Trump for sticking by him, along with various other Republican congressional figures such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar and Rand Paul. Cawthorn’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis has been handed a court defeat over his crusade to end what he calls censorship by social media companies.A three-judge appeals panel said key parts of DeSantis’s May 2021 law prohibiting politicians and prominent persons from being “deplatformed” was unconstitutional, the Orlando Sentinel reports.The 11th circuit court of appeal refused to lift an injunction placed earlier by a Donald Trump-appointed district court judge, who disagreed with DeSantis’s assertion that big tech companies had no right to remove content or users. “Put simply, with minor exceptions, the government can’t tell a private person or entity what to say or how to say it,” the court wrote in its 67-page opinion, the Sentinel said.When DeSantis signed it into law last year, free speech experts countered it was a blatant contravention of the first amendment to the US constitution, and predicted it would fall under legal challenge.Like other DeSantis “culture war” legislation, including his controversial “don’t say gay” bill and banning of “woke” math textbooks in classrooms, critics say it ignored real issues facing Floridians and was designed instead to appeal to the Republican base.The ruling strikes down $250,000 a day fines DeSantis wanted imposed on social media companies who banned political candidates. The judges allowed minor parts of the law to stand, including the right to a 60-day review period for those who are removed.Here’s a reminder of what Florida’s big tech law was about:Florida governor signs law against tech firms de-platforming politiciansRead moreLet’s take a quick look at where the day stands:
Joe Biden caused confusion by stating the US would defend Taiwan if the disputed island was attacked by China. But White House aides are stressing nothing has changed.
The Washington DC attorney general is suing Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg over “data harvesting” related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
A Covid-19 vaccine for children younger than five appears closer after Pfizer-BioNTech said clinical trials showed three low doses generated a strong immune response, and was safe and well-tolerated.
The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol is expected to stage six public hearings in June on how Donald Trump and some allies broke the law as they sought to overturn the 2020 election result.
Joe Biden says the fight against inflation is “going to be a haul”, with immediate relief for soaring prices of goods, services and gasoline unlikely. But the president also said he doesn’t believe a recession is “inevitable”.
My colleague David Smith has taken this look at the confusion created by Joe Biden’s comments at a press conference in Tokyo earlier appearing to undercut the US position of “strategic ambiguity” over Taiwan.At a lunchtime Pentagon briefing, defense secretary Lloyd Austin said Biden’s comments were intended to stress the US commitment was “to help provide Taiwan the means to protect itself” rather than direct military intervention, and there was no change in the US’ “one China” policy.The somewhat routine press conference in Tokyo was winding down when the question came. “Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?”Many past American presidents would have deflected, demurred, declined to give a straight answer. Not Joe Biden. “Yes,” he replied bluntly, adding: “That’s the commitment we made.”Reporters at the scene were taken aback. Sebastian Smith, the White House correspondent for Agence France-Presse, tweeted that Biden’s answer “really raised adrenaline levels in that palace briefing room right now. Next we all get to try and explain what it all actually means.”One possible meaning is that America has abandoned its long-held position of “strategic ambiguity” on Taiwan. But Biden may have delivered not so much strategic clarity as strategic confusion. That would be on brand for a president who has made a habit of speaking without a diplomatic filter.China considers the democratic island of Taiwan its territory under its “one-China” principle, and says it is the most sensitive and important issue in its relationship with Washington.This is where strategic ambiguity comes in. While the US is required by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself, it has never directly promised to intervene militarily in a conflict with China – but also never promised to stay out.This deliberate vagueness has – so far – helped deter China from invading Taiwan while also helping deter the self-ruled island from declaring full independence. Either scenario would trigger a major geopolitical crisis.Read the full story:Biden’s Taiwan vow creates confusion not clarity – and raises China tensionsRead moreThe fate of millions of women and American families hangs in the balance next month as we await the final ruling from the US supreme court in a pivotal case out of Mississippi, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health that includes a request for the historic abortion decision Roe v Wade to be struck down in its entirety.And millions of words have already been written about this, especially since the unprecedented leak in early May, via Politico, of the draft opinion written by hyper-conservative associate justice Samuel Alito and joined by four other right-leaning justices to give a super-majority in favor of overturning the national right to an abortion in the US.Here is the latest, very striking cover of New York Magazine.The Supreme Court will likely overturn Roe v. Wade, and the legal right to abortion will disappear in half the U.S. Abortion itself will not — and never has. In our new issue, we’ve compiled a practical guide to accessing an abortion, today and tomorrow https://t.co/RCi5xrH6T6 pic.twitter.com/8OmdsKUdjc— New York Magazine (@NYMag) May 23, 2022
In warrior journalism mode, the magazine has an extraordinary article and interactive, noting:“The legal right to abortion is likely to disappear in half the country in a matter of weeks. Abortion itself, and the need for it, will not, and never has. The question is what it will cost medically, financially — and criminally……“…..What we’re offering here is not medical advice but a pathway to understanding your options and liabilities with a comprehensive guide to getting an abortion in the U.S. now. It will be regularly updated online to bring you the information you need.”You can read the magazine article, buy its The Cut section, here.On the subject of coronavirus and especially for all our blog readers who are missing Donald Trump not being on Twitter, here is the former president’s latest splurge on his little platform, Truth Social.Meanwhile on Truth Social this morning, Trump is slamming Dr. Birx and her scarf collection. Birx just came out with a book about the WH Covid response and talks about issues with Trump during the pandemic, like his comment about injecting bleach. pic.twitter.com/PIOOq4MRY9— Meridith McGraw (@meridithmcgraw) May 23, 2022
This recalls a tragic episode all around. Many look back at the moment they wish then-White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx had leapt out of her seat in 2020 and, physically if necessary, gagged or hustled Trump off the media briefing stage to stop him suggesting to Americans that perhaps things like sunlight and bleach taken “inside” the body could get rid of Covid-19. Or at least emphatically contradicted him at the podium.Last month Birx told ABC that the whole debacle was “a tragedy on many levels” as she was talking about the book she has out about her role during the pandemic, when she resorted to driving all around the country talking to state and local officials about how to curb the raging virus spread.Here’s the response to Trump’s latest words, from conservative commentator Alyssa Farah Griffin.He’s such a petty, small man. Factcheck: he never fired Dr. Birx. https://t.co/3HgrTzbbYw— Alyssa Farah Griffin 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@Alyssafarah) May 23, 2022
US Senator Jeff Merkley has announced he has contracted the coronavirus. The Oregon Democrat attributed the mildness of his current symptoms to the fact that he is fully vaccinated and boosted.He urged everyone in the US to get similarly protected and warned, on Twitter: “Covid is still among us.”pic.twitter.com/r5XmUosx7i— Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) May 23, 2022
The US pushed through the world’s most successful program to develop vaccines against Covid in record time, approving the first safe and effective dose for emergency use in December, 2020, less than a year into the pandemic.Unfortunately, the country also has lost a million people to the virus, more than any other nation on record.The New York Times noted, using Australia as an example, that: “If the United States had the same Covid death rate as Australia, about 900,000 lives would have been saved.” The article noted a number of characteristic that influenced this number, including socio-political factors such as people’s collective trust in institutions and each other.Washington DC’s attorney general has sued Mark Zuckerberg, seeking to hold the Facebook co-founder personally responsible for his alleged role in allowing the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica to harvest the personal data of millions of Americans during the 2016 election cycle.The suit, filed in the capital by the District of Columbia attorney general, Karl Racine, alleges that Zuckerberg directly participated in policies that allowed Cambridge Analytica to unknowingly gather the personal data of US voters in an attempt to help Donald Trump’s election campaign.“This unprecedented security breach exposed tens of millions of Americans’ personal information, and Mr Zuckerberg’s policies enabled a multi-year effort to mislead users about the extent of Facebook’s wrongful conduct,” Racine said in a news release. NEW: We’re suing Mark Zuckerberg for his role in Facebook’s misleading privacy practices and failure to protect millions of users’ data.Our investigation shows extensive evidence that Zuckerberg was personally involved in failures that led to the Cambridge Analytica incident.— AG Karl A. Racine (@AGKarlRacine) May 23, 2022
Washington DC’s attorney general has sued Mark Zuckerberg, seeking to hold the Facebook co-founder personally responsible for his alleged role in allowing the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica to harvest the personal data of millions of Americans during the 2016 election cycle.The suit, filed in the capital by the District of Columbia attorney general, Karl Racine, alleges that Zuckerberg directly participated in policies that allowed Cambridge Analytica to unknowingly gather the personal data of US voters in an attempt to help Donald Trump’s election campaign.“This unprecedented security breach exposed tens of millions of Americans’ personal information, and Mr Zuckerberg’s policies enabled a multi-year effort to mislead users about the extent of Facebook’s wrongful conduct,” Racine said in a news release.“This lawsuit is not only warranted, but necessary, and sends a message that corporate leaders, including chief executives, will be held accountable for their actions.”Meta declined to comment.Racine has previously sued Facebook’s parent company, Meta, under the District of Columbia’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act. The act makes individuals responsible for violations if they knew about them at the time.The suit against Zuckerberg is based on hundreds of thousands of documents, including depositions from employees and whistleblowers, that have been collected as part of its ongoing litigation against Meta.“Since filing our landmark lawsuit against Facebook, my office has fought tooth and nail against the company’s characteristic efforts to resist producing documents and otherwise thwart our suit. We continue to persist and have followed the evidence right to Mr Zuckerberg,” said Racine.Read the full story:Zuckerberg sued by DC attorney general over Cambridge Analytica data scandalRead moreA firearms “buyback” hosted by California’s Sacramento police department to get weapons off the streets proved so popular that it ran out of money within 45 minutes, The Hill reports.Cops said they recovered 134 firearms during the weekend gas-for-guns buyback that offered a $50 gas gift card per weapon turned in. The event was scheduled to run five hours, but supplies of the gift cards didn’t last even one, and it closed down after four.Among the guns received were at least one assault weapon, numerous components for “ghost guns” and multiple illegally configured firearms, police said in a Facebook statement on Sunday. Police chief Kathy Lester said: “I truly believe violent crime prevention is a shared responsibility and today’s overwhelming community participation is evidence of the success we can achieve together”. Due to overwhelming response, we have exhausted our supply of gift cards for today’s gun exchange. We will still be accepting firearms but unfortunately we will not be providing gift cards from this point on. This event will be ending one hour early and will run until 4 p.m. pic.twitter.com/o9u7EohLXX— Sacramento Police (@SacPolice) May 21, 2022
Read more about the scourge of California’s “ghost gun” plague here:Ordered online, assembled at home: the deadly toll of California’s ‘ghost guns’Read moreStarbucks is joining the exodus of western companies from Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine, Reuters is reporting.The company will exit the Russian market after nearly 15 years as the Seattle-based coffee chain closes its 130 stores operated by its licensee Alshaya Group. It has almost 2,000 employees in the country.Starbucks’ decision to wind down its operation in Russia is different to the approach some other foreign companies have taken, Reuters says.McDonald’s last week said it was selling its restaurants in Russia to local licensee Alexander Govor to be rebranded under a new name, but will retain its trademarks, while French carmaker Renault is selling its majority stake in Russia’s biggest vehicle manufacturer with an option to buy back the stake.Other western companies, including Imperial Brands and Shell, are cutting ties with the Russia market by agreeing to sell their assets in the country or handing them over to local managers.Starbucks to exit Russia after nearly 15 years https://t.co/Y74uo47vti pic.twitter.com/qXoV4Gw073— Reuters (@Reuters) May 23, 2022
The Guardian’s Alexandra Villarreal reports from Texas on the battle between a mainstream Democrat and progressive challenger that could shape the party’s approach to midterm elections in the state:Two nearly identical text boxes appear on the respective campaign websites for Henry Cuellar and Jessica Cisneros, the Democrats locked in a heated primary runoff to represent south Texas in Congress.Cuellar’s text box warns voters that Cisneros “would defund the police and border patrol”, which “would make us less safe and wreck our local economy”. Cisneros, in turn, blasts Cuellar for opposing “women’s right to choose” amid a nationwide crackdown on reproductive care.The parallel advisories read like shorthand for the battle that’s brewing among Democrats in Texas, where centrist incumbents like Cuellar are facing a mushrooming cohort of young and progressive voters frustrated by the status quo. “I want people to take away from what we’re doing … people-power – people – can go toe-to-toe with any kind of corporate special interest,” Cisneros told the Guardian. “And that we still have power over what we want our future and our narrative to be here in Texas, despite all odds.”Texas-28 is a heavily gerrymandered, predominantly Latino congressional district that rides the US-Mexico border, including the city of Laredo, before sprawling across south-central Texas to reach into San Antonio. During the primary election in March, voters there were so split that barely a thousand votes divided Cuellar from Cisneros, while neither candidate received the majority they needed to win.Now, the runoff on 24 May has come to represent not only a race for the coveted congressional seat, but also a referendum on the future of Democratic politics in Texas and nationally.Read the full story:Progressive v anti-abortion Democrat: Texas faces pivotal primary runoffRead moreApproval of a Covid-19 vaccine for children younger than five appears closer after Pfizer-BioNTech said Monday that a clinical trial showed three low doses generated a strong immune response, and was safe and well-tolerated.The companies said they plan to soon ask global regulators to authorize the shot for the age group, children for whom no vaccine is currently approved in most of the world, Reuters reports. Submission of data to the US food and drug administration (FDA) should come later this week.The trial involved giving 1,678 children ages six months to under five years smaller doses of the vaccine than given to older children and adults. “The study suggests that a low 3mg dose of our vaccine, carefully selected based on tolerability data, provides young children with a high level of protection against the recent Covid-19 strains,” BioNTech’s chief executive, Ugur Sahin, said in a statement.We published data indicating that a low dose of 3 µg of our #mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, carefully selected based on tolerability data, is effective and provides children under 5 years of age with a high level of protection against the recent #COVID19 strains. https://t.co/EenuqWzVLt pic.twitter.com/VyDDKqJJg8— BioNTech SE (@BioNTech_Group) May 23, 2022
Vaccine take up in the US for the five to 11 age group is still at a worryingly low level, officials say, fueling fears of a summer surge of coronavirus cases among children.The FDA and federal centers for disease control and prevention signed off on booster shots for those children earlier this month. It could be seen as proof that Donald Trump’s popularity among Republicans is on the wane, or you could take it as a worthless straw poll of a few hundred already skewed voters. But either way, the former president finished second to Florida governor Ron DeSantis in a survey of Wisconsin Republicans as to who they want as their party’s 2024 presidential nominee.The result, a 122-104 win for DeSantis over Trump in a poll of 325 Republican activists at the Wisconsin state party’s weekend convention, reported by wispolitics.com, is hardly scientific proof of anything.But it does confirm the perception of DeSantis, who has signed into law a raft of “culture war” legislation in his state in recent weeks, as a rising star in Republican circles.The one-time Trump protégé, who faces a reelection fight as Florida’s governor in November, has long been considered a likely 2024 presidential contender. His recent policy “wins”, such as the “don’t say gay” bill outlawing classroom discussions of gender identity and sexual orientation, and the “racist” gerrymandering of Florida’s congressional maps has won him support from deep within Trump’s Maga base.In the Wisconsin poll of 2024 favorites, the only other politician to reach double figures was Nikki Haley, with a distant 24 votes. STRAW POLL NEWS: Wisconsin GOP activists are split on Donald Trump running for president in ’24.Even with him in the mix, @RonDeSantisFL was backed by a plurality of party activists who voted in the @wispolitics straw polls.See the full results:https://t.co/z80adZyizc— JR Ross (@jrrosswrites) May 21, 2022
The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol is expected to stage six public hearings in June on how Donald Trump and some allies broke the law as they sought to overturn the 2020 election results, according to sources familiar with the inquiry.The hearings are set to be a pivotal political moment for the country as the panel aims to publicly outline the potentially unlawful schemes that tried to keep the former president in office despite his defeat at the hands of Joe Biden.According to a draft schedule reviewed by the Guardian, the select committee intends to hold six hearings, with the first and last in prime time, where its lawyers will run through how Trump’s schemes took shape before the election and culminated with the Capitol attack.“We want to paint a picture as clear as possible as to what occurred,” the chairman of the select committee, Congressman Bennie Thompson, recently told reporters. “The public needs to know what to think. We just have to show clearly what happened on January 6.”The select committee has already alleged that Trump violated multiple federal laws to overturn the 2020 election, including obstructing Congress and defrauding the United States. But the hearings are where the panel intends to show how they reached those conclusions.According to the draft schedule, the June public hearings will explore Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, starting and ending with prime-time hearings at 8pm on the 9th and the 23rd. In between, the panel will hold 10am hearings on the 13th, 15th, 16th and 21st.The select committee appears to be planning for the hearings to be extensive affairs. The prime-time hearings are currently scheduled to last between 1.5 and 2 hours and the morning hearings between 2 and 2.5 hours.A select committee member will lead each of the hearings, the sources said, but top investigative lawyers who are intimately familiar with the material will primarily conduct the questioning of witnesses to keep testimony tightly on track.Read the full story:Capitol attack panel to hold six public hearings as it aims to show how Trump broke lawRead moreJoe Biden is warning Americans that the fight against inflation is “going to be a haul”, and that relief for soaring prices of goods, services and especially gasoline is unlikely to be immediate.But the president, speaking in Tokyo earlier today as he launched a new trade deal with 12 Indo-Pacific nations, told reporters that he doesn’t believe a recession is “inevitable”.Biden is acutely aware that the inflation crisis is uppermost in voters’ minds ahead of November’s midterm elections. There was little comfort for him in a bleak new CBS poll released Monday that finds 69% of the country thinks the economy is bad, and 77% saying they’re “pessimistic” about the cost of goods and services in the coming months.“This is going to be a haul. This is going to take some time,” Biden told reporters in Tokyo. In response to a reporter’s question specifically about a recession, Biden said he did not think it was “inevitable”. With his own approval ratings at the lowest point of his presidency, Biden is under pressure to try to reverse the situation and avoid Democrats losing control of one, or both chambers of Congress ion November’s midterms. That he is focused on the crisis back home while on tour in Asia would appear to back up his assertion last week that inflation was his “top domestic priority”. Critics have been quick to point out that, last summer, Biden and acolytes including treasury secretary Janet Yellen were insistent that high inflation would likely only be temporary.But it has continued to spiral, with the annual inflation rate still close to a 40-year high according to figures earlier this month. My colleague Lauren Gambino has this look at how the president is attempting to tackle inflation as the clock runs down on the midterms. The message for voters seems to be that if you think things are bad now, Republicans at the wheel would be much worse:Biden pitches Democrats as saviors for US economy ahead of midterm electionsRead moreGood morning! Welcome to a new week, and Monday’s US politics blog. Joe Biden is in Japan, but has his attention focused on a crisis back home, claiming that a recession in the US “is not inevitable”. That’s despite raging inflation, runaway gas prices and a particularly despondent new CBS poll that finds 69% of the country thinks the economy is bad, and 77% saying they’re “pessimistic” about the cost of goods and services in the coming months.If there’s one thing Biden doesn’t have, of course, it’s time, with November’s midterm elections looming fast and the president’s personal approval ratings below 40%. We’ll take a look at his plans to try to reverse a desperate situation a little later in today’s blog.Here’s what else is happening:
The 6 January House panel investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his election defeat to Joe Biden will hold six public hearings next month to lay out the former president’s illegal scheming to remain in power.
The US Senate convenes later today, and Democrats in the chamber are moving towards a vote on Thursday on the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act approved by the House last week in the aftermath of the massacre of 10 Black people by an alleged white supremacist in Buffalo, New York.
Today should have seen the end of the Trump-era Title 42 immigration policy halting refugees at the southern border because of Covid-19, but a federal judge blocked the Biden administration on Friday. The justice department is appealing the move.
Title 42 is also standing in the way of a Covid-19 relief package making any headway in Congress. Republicans won’t budge on approving a deal to fund vaccines, tests and treatments without a vote to keep the immigration policy in place, despite a sharp recent rise in cases.
We’re expecting one or more more minor rulings from the US supreme court today, ahead of what will be the blockbuster decision of the session in the coming weeks: whether the panel overturns the 1973 Roe v Wade protecting abortion rights.
It’s the final day of campaigning in Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas ahead of tomorrow’s primaries. Former vice-president Mike Pence will rally in Kennesaw tonight for Republican Georgia governor Brian Kemp, whom Pence’s former boss Donald Trump wants to take down for rejecting his election lies. More