US Politics

Mark Meadows removed from North Carolina voter roll amid fraud inquiryState is investigating whether Trump’s ex-chief of staff committed fraud by registering to vote at residence he never owned or lived in Donald Trump’s last White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has been removed from the electoral roll in North Carolina, amid a criminal inquiry into whether he committed election fraud by registering to vote at a residence he never owned or lived in.Melanie Thibault, director of the Macon county board of elections, confirmed her decision to the Asheville Citizen Times, which reported that the registration for Meadows’s wife, Debra, remained active.Before working for Trump, Meadows was a congressman from North Carolina.According to the New Yorker, which reported the story last month, Meadows registered as his address a rented mobile home, in Scaly Mountain, which he reportedly had never visited.He voted from there as an absentee in the 2020 presidential election. He has subsequently registered to vote in Virginia.According to neighbors in Scaly Mountain and the former owner of the property, Debra Meadows rented and stayed at the mobile home for “a few nights” but her husband was never seen there.Thibault said Meadows’s removal from the electoral roll was standard procedure under a statute that says a person who votes in another state loses their registration in North Carolina.Meadows, who with his wife owns a condo in Virginia, reportedly voted in that state in 2021, triggering the decision to remove him from the rolls.The Citizen reported that the North Carolina state bureau of investigation was continuing its inquiry into possible voter fraud by Meadows, a fierce Trump loyalist who has never commented on the story.The bureau, the newspaper said, would not comment on whether Meadows’s removal from the North Carolina roll would affect its investigation.Meadows has commented, extensively, on the dangers of voter fraud and its supposed role in Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.He addressed the subject at length in his memoir, The Chief’s Chief, a book which caused huge controversy when it revealed that Trump tested positive then negative for Covid before his first debate against Joe Biden, results which Meadows did not disclose.“President Trump had alerted us to the strong possibility that there would be fraud connected to these mail-in ballots, and we wanted to be on the lookout for it,” Meadows wrote in the book, adding: “We wanted to approach any potential challenges with the utmost seriousness.”The Trump campaign lost the overwhelming majority of cases alleging voter fraud in court. Trump’s lie about mass voter fraud in Biden’s win also fueled the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, in an attempt to stop certification of electoral college results.In his book, Meadows called the Capitol attack “shameful” and “the regrettable actions of a small group of people”.About 800 people, however, have been charged, with offences including seditious conspiracy.Meadows also claimed “millions” of Americans had “genuine concerns” about voter fraud.Meadows’s own legal jeopardy is not confined to North Carolina. The House committee investigating the attack has referred him to the Department of Justice for a possible charge of criminal contempt of Congress.TopicsMark MeadowsUS politicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationNorth CarolinanewsReuse this content More

Biden administration extends public transport mask mandate by two weeksCDC says it is extending order, which was set to expire on 18 April, to allow more time to study Omicron subvariant The Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it is extending the US nationwide mask requirement for public transit for 15 days as it monitors an uptick in Covid-19 cases.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it was extending the order, which was set to expire on 18 April, until 3 May to allow more time to study the BA.2 Omicron subvariant that is now responsible for the vast majority of cases in the US.“In order to assess the potential impact the rise of cases has on severe disease, including hospitalizations and deaths, and healthcare system capacity, the CDC order will remain in place at this time,” the agency said in a statement.When the Transportation Security Administration, which enforces the rule for planes, buses, trains and transit hubs, extended the requirement last month, it said the CDC had been hoping to roll out a more flexible masking strategy that would have replaced the nationwide requirement.The mask mandate is the most visible vestige of government restrictions to control the pandemic, and possibly the most controversial. A surge of abusive and sometimes violent incidents on airplanes has been attributed mostly to disputes over mask-wearing.Critics have seized on the fact that states have rolled back rules requiring masks in restaurants, stores and other indoor settings, and yet Covid-19 cases have fallen sharply since the Omicron variant peaked in mid-January.There has been a slight increase in cases in recent weeks, driven by the BA.2 strain, with daily confirmed cases nationwide rising from about 25,000 per day to more than 30,000. Those figures are an undercount since many people now test positive on at-home tests that are not reported to public health agencies.Severe illnesses and deaths tend to lag infections by several weeks. The CDC is awaiting indications of whether the increase in cases correlates to a rise in adverse outcomes before announcing a less restrictive mask policy for travel.TopicsBiden administrationJoe BidenOmicron variantCoronavirusUS politicsInfectious diseasesnewsReuse this content More

‘All these men’: Jill Biden resented Joe’s advisers who pushed White House runFirst lady tells authors of new biography she cut off push to recruit her husband to challenge George W Bush in 2004 Feeling “burned” by her husband’s first run for the presidency, Jill Biden resisted advisers including Ron Klain, now White House chief of staff, who pushed him to mount another campaign in 2004.Trump ‘very intent on bringing my brother down’, Joe Biden’s sister saysRead more“All these men – and they were mostly men – coming to our home,” she said. “You know, ‘You’ve got to run, you’ve got to run.’ I wanted no part of it.”The first lady was speaking to Julie Pace and Darlene Superville, co-authors of Jill: A Biography of the First Lady, which will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.“I didn’t even know whether I wanted Joe to ever do it again,” Jill Biden said. “I mean, I had been so burned.”Joe Biden first ran for president in 1987, withdrawing amid allegations that he plagiarised the leader of the British Labour party, Neil Kinnock, in campaign remarks.Jill Biden was describing a meeting at the Bidens’ house in Delaware more than 15 years later, when Joe Biden met Mark Gitenstein, a long-term adviser, and Klain joined on speakerphone.John Kerry, then a Massachusetts senator, was favourite for the Democratic nomination to challenge George W Bush. But, the authors write, “some party leaders thought Joe could go head-to-head with [the] president … in the general election”.“There were always so many people trying to get Joe to run,” Jill Biden said. “You’ve got to run again. You’ve got to try again. Always. It was constant.“He knew that I wasn’t in favour of his running.”The authors cite Jill Biden’s autobiography, Where the Light Enters, published in 2019, in which she describes “‘fuming’ out by the pool” while the meeting with Klain and Gitenstein went on.Jill Biden writes that she eventually cut the meeting off by drawing “NO” on her stomach with a Sharpie pen and “march[ing] through the room in my bikini.“Needless to say, they got the message.”“Joe and Gitenstein did, at any rate,” Pace and Superville write. “Klain, still eagerly engaged on speakerphone and unaware of what had just transpired in the room, kept brainstorming away.“‘I don’t understand it,’ a bewildered Klain said later when Gitenstein called to explain. ‘The conversation was going so great and all of a sudden, it just stopped.’”Joe Biden did mount a second run for the White House in 2008, with Jill’s support, but dropped out early, unable to compete with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.Neil Kinnock on Biden’s plagiarism ‘scandal’ and why he deserves to win: ‘Joe’s an honest guy’Read moreHe was Obama’s vice-president for eight years, spent four years in apparent retirement, then beat Donald Trump in 2020 to become, at 78, the oldest president inaugurated for the first time. Pace and Superville describe how Jill Biden supported her husband’s second and third White House runs.Klain was appointed to oversee the effort against Ebola in 2014 and remains one of Joe Biden’s closest and most powerful advisers. Last year, the New York Times reported that “Republicans have taken to calling him Prime Minister Klain”, a characterisation Klain has disputed.Gitenstein, a lawyer who worked for the Senate judiciary committee when Biden chaired it, was ambassador to Romania under Obama. He advised Biden in 2020 and is now US ambassador to the European Union.Jill Biden’s most senior male aide is Anthony Bernal. He has been described, by Politico, as both “an influential figure” and “one of the most polarising people” in the Biden White House.TopicsBooksPolitics booksJoe BidenUS politicsDemocratsUS elections 2004US elections 2020newsReuse this content More

Extremists like Marjorie Taylor Greene are the future of the Republican partyThomas ZimmerIt’s impossible to understand American politics without grappling in earnest with why Greene’s extremism is widely seen as justified on the right Ever since entering Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene has been making headlines for her long history of peddling conspiracy theories, her blatant embrace of anti-Muslim bigotry and white Christian nationalism, and her aggression against political opponents. The latest escalation came last week, when she smeared her Republican colleagues in the Senate, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, as “pro-pedophile” after they voted to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the US supreme court; Democrats, she added, “are the party of pedophiles.”There is a calculating quality to Greene’s polemics. Last fall, for instance, she recorded a campaign video in which she used a military-grade sniper rifle to blow up a car that had the word “socialism” written on it, promising to do the same to the “Democrats’ socialist agenda.” It was over-exaggerated campaign nonsense. But Greene knew the unsubtle insinuation of using violence against a political opponent would demand attention.The fact that Greene’s antics are so clearly designed to keep herself in the spotlight has prompted calls for the media and commentators to stop paying attention to her rather than be complicit in the amplification of far-right propaganda. And if what’s on display here were just the extremist behavior of a fringe figure, it would indeed be best to simply ignore her. This, however, isn’t just Greene’s extremism – it is increasingly that of the Republican party itself. Greene and the many provocateurs like her are not just rightwing trolls, but elected officials in good standing with their party. Ignoring them won’t work, nor will making fun of them: These people are in positions of influence, fully intent on using their power.In any (small-d) democratic party, Greene’s extremism should be disqualifying. In today’s Republican party, she’s not being expelled, she’s being elevated. Greene is undoubtedly one of the rightwing stars in the country, and that’s not just a media phenomenon. Republican candidates crave her endorsement. Democrats stripped her of her committee assignments against the vote of nearly all of Greene’s Republican colleagues; if the Republicans capture the House in November, she’ll probably get those assignments back.It is true that occasionally, Greene’s most egregious actions have led to some measure of symbolic distancing from Republican leadership. After she spoke at the white supremacist America First Political Action Conference (Afpac) in February, where she was enthusiastically introduced and embraced by the well-known far-right activist and Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes, minority leader Kevin McCarthy gave her a good talking to – but no serious consequences followed.Overall, Greene’s position within the Republican party seems secure. That’s partly because the Republican leadership is surely aware that most of the energy and activism in conservatism is in the far-right wing that stands behind Greene. In fact, Greene is the poster child of a rising group of rightwing radicals: in Congress, she likes to present herself and like-minded allies such as representatives Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz as the future of the Republican party, and they aren’t shy about their intention to purge whatever vestiges of “moderate” conservatism might still exist within the Republican party.Greene’s rise is indicative of a more openly militant form of white Christian nationalism inserting itself firmly at the center of Republican politics. “America First” candidates like Greene are representing the Republican party all over the country. In Arizona, for instance, state senator Wendy Rogers proudly declared herself to “stand with Jesus, Robert E Lee, and the Cleveland Indians” back in December – all of them supposedly “canceled” by “satanic communists”; and at the aforementioned AFPAC in February, Rogers suggested building gallows to hang political enemies. In Georgia, gubernatorial candidate Kandiss Taylor runs on a platform of “Jesus, Guns, and Babies” and openly advocates for the establishment of a Christian theocracy.The Republican party doesn’t just tolerate such extremists in an attempt to appease the fringe – this isn’t simply a matter of acquiescence out of convenience or cowardice. What we really need to grapple with is the fact that this sort of radicalism is widely seen as justified on the right. The exact language someone like Greene uses might be slightly crasser than what some conservatives are comfortable with, and some Republicans might disagree with specific aspects of the public image she projects. But it’s obviously not enough for them to break with her, or with any of the Christian nationalist extremists in their ranks.If anything, most of what Greene is saying actually aligns with the general thrust of conservative politics. Republicans are currently all in on smearing anyone who disagrees with their assault on LGBTQ rights as “groomers” and declaring any progressive social position adjacent to pedophilia. And it’s really hard to tell the difference between Greene’s propaganda and what much of the reactionary intellectual sphere has been producing. Rod Dreher, for instance, one of the Religious Right’s best-known exponents, has called the Democrats the “party of groomers” and “the party of child mutilators and kidnappers” lately. Or take the gun-toting militancy that was on display in Greene’s campaign video. Republicans have long embraced the gun cult and made it a key element of their political identity. Now candidates up and down the country have the whole family, including young children, pose for heavily armed photos, reveling in the imagery of using guns to fight off those insidious Democrats and their assault on America.That’s precisely the key to understanding why so many Republicans are willing to embrace political extremism. Greene’s central message is fully in line with what has become dogma on the right: that Democrats are a radical, “Un-American” threat, and have to be stopped by whatever means. Everyone suspected of holding liberal or progressive positions is a “fellow traveler with the radical left,” as senator Ted Cruz put it; as part of the “militant left,” Democrats need to be treated as the “the enemy within,” according to senator Rick Scott; and Florida governor Ron DeSantis declared that Stacey Abrams winning the Georgia gubernatorial election would be akin to a foreign adversary taking over and lead to a “cold war” between the two neighboring states.It doesn’t matter to the right that Greene’s pedophilia accusations lack any empirical basis. What matters is that they adhere to the higher truth of conservative politics: that Democrats are a fundamental threat to the country, to its moral foundations, its very survival. “How much more can America take before our civilization begins to collapse?” Greene asked last week. There aren’t many conservatives left who disagree with her assessment. That’s how they are giving themselves permission to embrace whatever radical measures are deemed necessary to defeat this “Un-American” enemy. Once you have convinced yourself you are fighting a noble war against a bunch of pedophiles hellbent on destroying the nation, there are no more lines you’re not justified to cross. Greene and her fellow extremists are perceived to be useful shock troops in an existential struggle for the survival of “real” America. The right isn’t getting distracted by debates over whether Greene’s militant extremism or Mitch McConnell’s extreme cynicism are the right approach to preventing multiracial pluralism. They are united in the quest to entrench white reactionary rule.I fear that four years of Trumpism in power so inundated us with political stunts and outrageous political acts that we might have become a bit numb to how extreme and dangerous these developments are. Let’s not be lulled into a false sense of security by the clownishness, the ridiculousness of it all. Some of history’s most successful authoritarians were considered goons and buffoons by their contemporaries – until they became goons and buffoons in power.What we are witnessing is one party rapidly abandoning and actively assaulting the foundations of democratic political culture. Every “Western” society has always harbored some far-right extremists like Greene. But the fact that the Republican party embraces and elevates people like her constitutes an acute danger to democracy.
Thomas Zimmer is a visiting professor at Georgetown University, focused on the history of democracy and its discontents in the United States, and a Guardian US contributing opinion writer
TopicsUS politicsOpinionRepublicansThe far rightcommentReuse this content More

Wave of union victories suggests union-busting consultants may have lost their swayChallenging anti-union rhetoric and pro-union attitudes of younger workers are undermining highly paid consultants The nation’s anti-union consultants and lawyers – who have made millions of dollars fighting against union drives – have just been through some of their worst weeks ever as unions racked up wins at Amazon, Starbucks, REI, the New York Times, MIT and other places.These consultants and lawyers – often called “union busters” – have done so poorly that John Logan, a professor who has studied “union avoidance” efforts for two decades, says their anti-union kryptonite seems to have suddenly lost much of its power. “For decades, the consultants have seemed almost invincible. Many firms have boasted victory rates of over 95%,” said Logan, a professor at San Francisco State. But in Staten Island, “the Amazon Labor Union turned the tables on the company’s anti-union consultants” and showed they may have been “more of a liability than an asset”.Logan said anti-union consultants are often no longer as effective because workers and their attitudes have changed: workers, especially younger workers, are braver about speaking out, they’re using social media to outmaneuver the consultants, and they’re embracing highly effective strategies, like worker-to-worker organizing and interrupting so-called captive audience meetings, where consultants discuss the supposed evils of unions. Logan said workers often used to be far more scared to stand up to anti-union consultants, and one reason workers are less frightened is that the low jobless rate makes it easier for workers to find another job if they get fired for supporting a union.“They survived the pandemic, and they’re no longer so fearful,” Logan said. “The pandemic was such a frightening experience that workers have recalibrated their sense of risk about what they’re prepared to do in their lives. They’re more prepared to join a union campaign. They feel they’ve repeatedly been disrespected while their employers were making billions of dollars.”Logan was impressed that workers interrupted several of Amazon’s captive audience meetings. “The fact that they had the courage to do that helps show that something has fundamentally changed,” he said. “The mechanism of the captive audience meeting is much less successful if someone gets up and challenges what they’re saying. It all crumbles away.”Angelika Maldonado, a 27-year-old packer at Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse, was one of the workers who interrupted a captive audience meeting. She and other workers challenged Amazon’s assertion that workers might see their wages cut if they unionize. She also sought to rebut one of Amazon’s main arguments. “They put out all this propaganda that we were a third party,” Maldonado said. “Once we gained the trust of workers, they would see we are not a third-party union.” Rather, she explained, we are Amazon workers like them who created a union.Some Staten Island worker-organizers outed the anti-union consultants who walked the warehouse floor, urging workers to vote against unionizing. Workers sought to learn their names, and once they did, they tweeted out the consultant’s name and photo and urged workers not to talk to them. They further undermined the consultants’ effectiveness by highlighting that some of them earned $3,200 a day.Maldonado said: “We did some calculations and showed that instead of paying these union busters all this money, Amazon could have given everyone in the building a raise.”Wilma Liebman, chair of the National Labor Relations Board during president Obama’s first term, said anti-union consultants have grown less effective because they haven’t kept up with the changing workforce. “It’s hard to imagine how any of these union busters succeed. Almost all are old white guys,” she said. “They seek to demonstrate control with some intimidation factor. Whether these workers are white, African American or something else, it’s still a culture clash. It’s hard to imagine that the message of these consultants has much resonance.”Liebman added: “One way the consultants seem to be as effective as ever is in convincing employers to buy their services.” Some anti-union lawyers charge more than $1,200 an hour.A longtime management-side labor lawyer in Washington, who insisted on anonymity, said the recent string of union victories doesn’t mean that anti-union lawyers and consultants have become less effective. “More has been made of this than it should be,” he said. “I think it’s very situational.” He noted that unionization drives lost recently at a Hershey’s factory in Virginia and at HelloFresh food-packing facilities. (At those places, the workers didn’t challenge the anti-union consultants nearly as much as they did at Amazon or Starbucks.)The lawyer acknowledged that young workers are “challenging authority” more than their parents’ generation. “I think workers are more skeptical of what people say. They’re more willing to challenge, perhaps, than they were in the past.”A second lawyer, a partner at one of the nation’s leading anti-union law firms, also insisting on anonymity, said that workers’ smart use of social media has undercut union avoidance efforts. “The internet and social media have made employees much more savvy,” he said. “They’ve able to communicate better with each other and see different sources of information. I think social media has changed – and maybe leveled – the playing field.”Rebecca Givan, a professor of labor studies at Rutgers, said: “Young workers are more excited to speak up and counteract them, by, for instance, talking up in a captive audience meeting, challenging the supposed facts in a presentation. These are really new things.”Young workers are too young to remember Ronald Reagan’s busting the air-traffic controllers union. Many have been emboldened by Bernie Sanders and by the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements. Many young workers feel angry and squeezed by large student debt loads and soaring rents.Givan said social media has helped inoculate workers against anti-union consultants: “When workers are rapidly able to share anti-union talking points and see that they use the same arguments at different companies and workplaces, that it’s all cookie cutter, all from the same playbook, it shows how tired their tactics and rhetoric are.”Richard Bensinger, an organizer with Workers United who helped lead the Starbucks’ unionization campaign, said new technologies have helped overcome the union-avoidance consultants. “I don’t think we could have done this without Zoom and virtual meetings and partners talking to partners,” he said. (Partners is the term Starbucks uses to describe its workers.) Thus far, workers have voted in favor of unionizing at 18 of the 19 Starbucks where votes have been counted, and workers at more than 200 Starbucks have petitioned for unionization elections.“As far as inoculation, we get Samantha from the New York Roastery, which just voted to unionize, to speak to people at the Starbucks in Austin, Texas, telling them what to expect from the anti-union folks,” Bensinger said.Some Amazon and Starbucks workers have used TikTok to get out their pro-union message and WhatsApp and Telegram to spread the word and answer workers’ questions.Bensinger said the anti-union consultants and lawyers are still plenty effective, but often fall short. He noted that at one Buffalo Starbucks, 100% of the workers signed pro-union cards, but the union won there just 15 to 9. He said the solidarity and activism of the young workers was key to defeating the anti-union lawyers and consultants.“Young workers will only take so much,” he said. “A worker in Montana told me, ‘I’m making just $11 an hour and making Howard Schultz rich.’ Unions today are their big hope.”TopicsUS unionsAmazonStarbucksUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

Report raises alarm on ‘insidious’ effort to undermine US democracyState legislatures using gerrymandering, voter suppression, misinformation and intimidation to make voting more difficult An “insidious and coordinated” effort between lawmakers and extremist groups is under way to undermine American democracy, according to a new report.On Tuesday, the nonpartisan civil rights organization National Urban League released the annual report in its analysis series The State of Black America. The report, called Under Siege: The Plot to Destroy Democracy, outlines the “conspiracy and the urgent case for a national mobilization to protect and defend our most sacred constitutional right”.It focuses on four main tactics that it says are used in this effort: gerrymandering, voter suppression, misinformation and intimidation.In 2021 alone, 20 states have leveraged census data to redraw congressional maps, it noted. The new maps proposed by Republican state lawmakers “are no more than modern-day gerrymandering that strips voting power away from communities with Black and brown voters”, the report said.It also listed 34 laws passed in 19 states between January 1 and December 7 2021 that make it more difficult for people to vote.In addition to shortening the window to apply and deliver mail ballots, those laws limit absentee voting lists, restrict assistance in returning a voter’s mail ballot, reduce the availability of mail ballot drop boxes, and increase barriers for voters with disabilities, among other restrictions.“The burden of these laws – strict photo ID requirements, the elimination or restriction of Sunday voting, voting by mail and early voting, and the closing of polling locations – overwhelmingly falls on Black voters,” Marc Morial, president and CEO of NUL, said in the report.“Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the United States has seen a steady rise in disenfranchisement practices giving one party an edge over the other. But never before has the nation seen such an insidious and coordinated campaign to obliterate the very principle of ‘one person, one vote’ from the political process.”According to the report, state legislatures in 18 states carried over at least 152 restrictive bills from the 2021 legislative season. Additionally, in states that allow lawmakers to “pre-file” bills ahead of the next legislative season, at least 96 bills in 12 states would make it more difficult for voters to cast their ballots.The report also laid out steps that have been taken to sabotage elections, including discrediting the vote and outright aiming to establish one-party rule, as demonstrated by the Stop the Steal movement.It also notes an uptick in intimidation of election officials since 2020, with one in six local election officials saying they have personally experienced threats, and a quarter concerned about being assaulted because of their role.Additionally, the report found that election workers are resigning and retiring at alarming rates, with one in five saying that they are “very” or “somewhat” unlikely to continue serving through 2024.It cites a poll conducted by the strategic research and consulting firm Benenson Strategy Group in which an overwhelming majority of Black Americans said they believe strongly in the power of their vote to make a difference when it comes to social and racial justice, police violence and economic opportunity.However, nearly as many agree that elected officials are not doing enough to protect their voting rights and are in fact “doing more to limit voting rights than to protect them”.TopicsUS voting rightsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More