US Politics

The Presidency of Donald Trump review: the first draft of history Julian Zelizer of Princeton has assembled a cast of historians to consider every aspect of four years that shook AmericaAfter thousands of articles and scores of books about Donald Trump’s mostly catastrophic presidency, it’s difficult for anyone to break dramatic new ground. But this new volume, with contributions from 18 American academics, is broader and deeper than all its predecessors, with essays covering everything from Militant Whiteness to the legacy of Trump’s Middle East policies, under the title Arms, Autocrats and Annexations.The result is a great deal of information that is familiar to those who have already plowed through dozens of volumes, enlivened by a few new facts and a number of original insights.One of the best essays, about the Republican party Trump inherited, is written by the book’s editor, Julian Zelizer. The Princeton historian reminds us that the “smashmouth partisanship” perfected by Trump actually began when Newt Gingrich snared the House speakership nearly 30 years ago. In 1992, Pat Buchanan’s speech to the Republic convention featured all of the gay-bashing Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, (and may other Republicans) have revived with so much gusto in 2022.Trump swooped in to profit from White House photographer’s book deal – reportRead moreWith major contributions from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the rightwing media machine, most of the GOP moved so far right it didn’t become Trump’s party because he “seized control” but rather because “he fit so perfectly” with it. Most Republicans were “all in” for Trump, from Mitt Romney, the ex-never Trumper who voted with his former nemesis more than 80% of the time, to “moderate” Chris Christie, who gave Trump an “A” four months after his four years of scorched-earth governance were over.Nicole Hemmer, from Columbia, offers an excellent primer on the irresistible rise of rightwing media, reminding us that in the last year of the first George Bush presidency, Limbaugh was spending the night at the White House. By 2009, the shock jock “topped polls asking who led the Republican party”.By the time Trump started his run for the presidency, in 2015, he had “grown far more powerful than the political media ecosystem that had boosted his rightwing bona fides”. This became clear after his dust-up with Megyn Kelly. Moderating a primary debate, the Fox anchor challenged his long history of sexist statements. Trump declared afterwards: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”The Fox News chief, Roger Ailes, “stayed silent”, Hemmer writes. Another executive, Bill Shine, “told on-air anchors not to come to Kelly’s defense”.By the spring of 2016, Fox was becoming less important than Breitbart, an extreme-right website which researchers at Harvard and MIT declared the new anchor of a “rightwing media network”. It was Steve Bannon of Breitbart who “armed Trump with something like a cohesive political platform … built on anti-immigrant, anti-Black, anti-Muslim, and anti-liberal politics – the same agenda Breitbart.com was promoting”.“Sure enough”, Trump’s Twitter feed “during the campaign linked to Breitbart more than any other news site”.Eventually, just about everyone on the right became a Trump disciple. Glenn Beck compared him to Hitler in 2016. By 2018, Beck was wearing a red Make America Great Again hat, though he blamed the media’s “Trump Derangement Syndrome” for “forcing him to become a Trump supporter”. As a former rightwing radio host, Charlie Sykes, explained: “There’s really not a business model for conservative media to be anti-Trump.”A Brown historian, Bathsheba Demuth, demonstrates that Trump was also a perfect fit for a party that endorsed a propaganda initiative of the American Petroleum Institute that portrayed environmental protection as “a dangerous slide toward communist authoritarianism”. Among loyal constituents were evangelicals, who either saw human dominion over nature as “a doctrinal requirement” or just thought the whole debate was irrelevant because of “Christ’s imminent resurrection”.The most surprising fact in this chapter is that the fossil fuel industry was so sure Trump was a loser in 2016, it gave the bulk of its contributions to Hillary Clinton.Margaret O’Mara, of the University of Washington, describes big tech’s key role in our national meltdown. She reminds us of a key, mostly forgotten moment 10 years ago, when “Google and Facebook successfully petitioned the Federal Election Commission for exemptions from disclaimer requirements” that required political ads to say who paid for them and who was responsible for their messages.The companies argued the requirements would “undermine other, much larger parts of their businesses”. Disastrously, the FEC went along with that pathetic argument. After that, no one ever knew exactly where online attack ads were coming from.O’Mara also recalls that Facebook provided the 2016 Trump campaign with “dedicated staff and resources” to help it purchase more ads on the platform. O’Mara mistakenly reports that the Clinton campaign received the same kind of largesse. Actually, in what may have been the campaign’s single worst decision, it refused Facebook’s offer to install staffers in Clinton’s Brooklyn headquarters.Dignity in a Digital Age review: a congressman takes big tech to taskRead moreAnother chapter, by Daniel C Kurtzer of Princeton, analyses what Trump supporters consider their president’s greatest foreign policy achievement: the initiation of diplomatic relations between Israel and Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Morocco.A conservative journal summarized the accomplishment this way: “Washington is strengthening repression in Bahrain, underwriting aggression by UAE, sacrificing the Sahrawi people [of Western Sahara, to Morocco], undermining reform in Sudan and even abandoning justice for Americans harmed by Sudan. The administration calls this an ‘American first’ policy.”The last chapter focuses on the two failed attempts to convict Trump in impeachment trials. Those outcomes may be Trump’s worst legacy of all. Gregory Downs, from the University of California, Davis, writes that the failures to convict “in the face of incontrovertible proof” may convince all Trump’s successors “that they have almost complete impunity as long as they retain the support of their base, no matter what the constitution says”.
The Presidency of Donald Trump is published in the US by Princeton University Press
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‘I don’t do this often for state people’: Trump stumps for Michigan candidates in voting rights battleTrump praises little-known Republicans Matthew DePerno and Kristina Karamo, who both falsely claimed 2020 election fraud and are now seeking key Michigan offices Eight hours before Donald Trump took the stage in the Detroit suburbs on Saturday, an army of canvassers darted along the line of people snaking outside the hulking sports complex where supporters of the former president were waiting to get in. “You guys think we’re gonna have a fair election?,” one canvasser asked Marco Braggion, 26 and Christian Howard, 25, who was standing in a cowboy hat and jean jacket. “We need to be able to work those polls to keep eyes on what’s going on.”The latest threat to democracy? A Trump-backed candidate willing to ‘find extra votes’Read moreIt was an exchange that underscored how Republicans, stewing in doubts about the 2020 election, are organizing to take control of the machinery of elections – how ballots are cast and counted. And when Trump took the stage Saturday evening, his first visit to Michigan since 2020, that’s what he was focused on too. He was there to campaign for two-little known candidates who are seeking offices that wield significant power over voting rules in Michigan, one of the most important battleground states in the presidential election.Trump was stumping for Matthew DePerno, who is seeking the GOP nomination for attorney general, and Kristina Karamo, a Republican running to be Michigan secretary of state, the state’s chief election official. Both are seeking to earn the Republican nomination at the party’s convention in the state this month.Neither has any prior political experience and their political rise stems almost entirely from their efforts to spread misinformation about the 2020 election. Joe Biden defeated Trump in the state by just over 154,000 votes in 2020, and Trump’s efforts to throw out the election. If Karamo and DePerno were elected this fall, it would place two Trump allies in key positions from which they could potentially do what he could not in 2020: overturn an election result.“Remember this is not just about 2022, this is about making sure Michigan is not rigged and stolen in 2024,” Trump said in a meandering hour and forty-five minute speech in which he repeatedly insisted, falsely, that he won Michigan in 2020. “I have to be honest, I don’t do this often for state people, this is so important. What happened in Michigan, it’s a disgrace.”Karamo is a part-time community college professor who became a celebrity in Republican circles after claiming she witnessed fraud on election night while observing ballots being counted in Detroit. Those claims have been debunked, but she has nonetheless catapulted to the front of the Republican field in the secretary of state race. She joined an unsuccessful Michigan’s 2020 election from being certified and sought to intervene in an unsuccessful effort at the US supreme court seeking to overturn election results in key swing states. She has called public schools “government indoctrination camps” and suggested those who attacked the US capitol on 6 January were antifa.She electrified the crowd packed into the astroturf inside the Michigan Stars Sport Center on Saturday night calling Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat currently serving as secretary of state, “an authoritarian leftist who treats the people of Michigan like the unwashed masses.”“There’s an army of people across our state who are fighting back. Little MAGA warriors and we’re getting the job done,” she said, using the acronym for Trump’s slogan, Make America Great Again.Speaking to reporters earlier this week, Benson said Michigan was “ground zero” in the battle for American democracy. She said Trump was seeking to put loyalists in power who might succumb to future requests to undo elections.“We’ve also been fighting election-deniers, some of whom now want to take over statewide offices so they can potentially be in a position to block or undo or fail to certify election results that they disagree with in the future. That is simply what’s at stake this fall,” she said.DePerno rose to prominence last year as he spread false allegations of fraud in Antrim county, in Northern-Michigan, where a clerk made a mistake on election night and posted incorrect numbers that initially showed Biden leading. DePerno led a lawsuit against the county and spread incorrect information suggesting votes could have been switched. A government review and a separate GOP-led investigation of the incident found no evidence of fraud, and was unsparing in its criticism of DePerno.“No longer will we allow the elites in this country to control our elections and to control us,” DePerno said on Saturday. He has pledged to arrest Benson and Dana Nessel, the current Democratic attorney general.“[Trump] wants people who will manipulate the 2024 election to his advantage,” Nessel told the Guardian on Friday. “ Just a handful of years ago, they would have been seen as extreme, fringe candidates that never would have gotten any traction in the Republican party. And now, they are emblematic of the Republican party.”Outside of the rally, a soundtrack of songs that have become staples of Trump rallies – Elton John’s Tiny Dancer among them – blasted while some people played cornhole. Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO got thunderous applause when he briefly appeared.The most prominent canvassers were those seeking to get rallygoers to sign a petition for a ballot measure to “decertify” the results of the 2020 election in Michigan, something that is not legally possible. Organizers hoped to get 10,000 signatures at Trump’s rally on Saturday, said Janice Daniels, a former local mayor involved in the effort, who was collecting signatures on Saturday. She said she was unmoved by widespread legal agreement that the 2020 election cannot be undone and several reviews in Michigan that have affirmed the result of the 2020 election.“That’s what the enemies say. They want to discourage you from doing what is right and what is good and what is possible,” she said. “Extraordinary problems require extraordinary solutions. We’re in an extraordinary environment where we had a coup d’etat take over our entire government.”But some people at the rally acknowledged that decertifying the election wasn’t really a possibility. “I don’t think it’s possible, but it so should have been done. It’s a done deal,” said Diane Zechmeister, 67. Zechmeister said she didn’t follow election administration particularly closely until 2020, “when things went sideways”.A friend who attended with her, Carol Fischer, 68, said nothing could persuade her that the results of the 2020 election were accurate. “I will never believe that,” she said. Several polls since the 2020 election have shown that many Republicans continue to believe Trump won.Greg Taylor, 38, also was in line early to get into the rally to ensure he would get a spot inside. Even after state officials, and legislative Republicans in Michigan, have put out several audits and reports debunking conspiracies in Michigan, Taylor couldn’t think of anything that would persuade him the results of the election were accurate. “Not with what I’ve seen. I really, I just can’t see that,” he said. “The only way that we could know is, I guess, through an audit I guess. But who knows about the audit?”“It’s so hard to trust anybody. I don’t trust either side,” he said.Tyler Griffin, who was waiting in line wearing an oversized red cowboy hat, also said nothing could persuade him to accept the 2020 results. “I looked at all the numbers and it doesn’t add up.”Not everyone at the rally was enthusiastic about Trump’s continued focus on elections. Howard, the early rallygoer who was approached about being an election worker, said he hoped Trump would leave the 2020 election in the past.“I hope he kind of lets it go,” he said. “I know he’s not going to, but I hope he does.”TopicsUS newsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

Republican Senate hopeful overstated academic achievements for yearsHerschel Walker, frontrunner for party nomination in Georgia, claimed to have graduated in top 1% – but never actually graduated A Republican Senate candidate in Georgia said for years that he graduated in the top 1% of his university’s class – but actually never graduated college at all.Herschel Walker, a former pro football player who is running as a Republican in Georgia’s US Senateprimary, has publicly stated multiple times that he graduated in the top 1% of his class at University of Georgia despite never completing his degree.Ex-NFL star Herschel Walker posts baffling video promoting US Senate runRead moreThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) first reported on Walker lying about his college degree in December 2021. Walker later deleted the claim from his campaign website and released a statement to AJC acknowledging that he never graduated.“I was majoring in Criminal Justice at [University of Georgia] when I left to play in the [United States Football League] my junior year,” said Walker in his statement. “After playing with the New Jersey Generals, I returned to Athens to complete my degree, but life and football got in the way.”But Walker has actually been misrepresenting his academic achievements for years in interviews and motivational speeches, as recently as 2017, according to an investigation by CNN.In a speech from that year, Walker said: “And all of sudden I started going to the library, getting books, standing in front of a mirror reading to myself. So that Herschel, that all the kids said was retarded, become valedictorian of his class. Graduated University of Georgia in the top 1% of his class.”Walker repeated those claims in a 2017 interview with Sirius XM radio: “I also was valedictorian of my class. I also was in the top 1% of my graduating class of college.”Walker never received a diploma from the University of Georgia. After maintaining a B average throughout college, as reported by the Christian-Science Monitor and the New York Times, Walker left to play professional football and never completed his degree.Walker’s campaign was not able to provide proof that he graduated from the University of Georgia to CNN, but did defend his athletic record.CNN found that Walker also repeated false claims about his academic achievements in high school. Walker has said on multiple occasions that he was valedictorian of his high school class. While Walker was a top student in his high school with an A average, CNN did not find proof that Walker was ever named valedictorian.CNN also found no evidence that his high school even named a valedictorian or salutatorian until 1994, after Walker had graduated.Walker’s campaign could not verify that Walker was his high school valedictorian, but did provide comment on Walker overstating his high school achievements to CNN.“There is not a single voter in Georgia who believes that whether Herschel graduated at the ‘top of his class’ or as valedictorian 40 years ago has any bearing on his ability to be a great United States senator,” said Mallory Blount, communications director for the campaign, in a statement.Walker has remained a contentious primary candidate, with some Georgia Republicans doubting he can win the GOP primary due to his personal baggage, reported Salon. Walker has admitted to past violent behavior against his ex-wife Cindy Grossman and faces other accusations of violence against women from incidents in 2002 and in 2012, which Walker denies.Grossman has publicly detailed domestic violence she suffered from Walker during their relationship. In divorce filings, Grossman said that Walker was physically abusive towards her, forcing her to obtain a protective order against him. In 2008 interview with ABC, Grossman also said that Walker pointed a gun at her head and threatened to kill her.Walker has spoken about his history with violence in an exclusive 2021 interview with Axios, saying that he is “accountable” to his past actions against Grossman and has pursued therapy to treat his mental health problems.Walker, who was endorsed by former president Donald Trump, is the expected Republican nominee against the Democratic senator Raphael Warnock in November.TopicsGeorgiaRepublicansUS politicsUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

Teamsters president vows to pressure Amazon after New York votes for unionSean O’Brien says it’s vital to organize Amazon, asserting that the e-commerce company has ‘total disrespect’ for its workers The Teamsters’ new president has pledged his powerful union will step up the pressure on Amazon and mount its own efforts to unionize the company after workers in New York voted to form the company’s first US union.In an interview with the Guardian Sean O’Brien said it was vital to organize Amazon, asserting that the e-commerce company has “total disrespect” for its workers and was putting downward pressure on standards for unionized warehouse workers and truck drivers across the US.“You have an employer like Jeff Bezos taking a joyride into space, and he bangs on his workers to be able to fund his trip,” said O’Brien, who was inaugurated as Teamsters president on 22 March. He asserted that Amazon workers would benefit greatly from joining the Teamsters, saying that Amazon’s drivers and warehouse workers are treated and paid considerably worse than their unionized counterparts at other companies.“They’re awful, they’re disrespectful the way they treat their employees,” O’Brien said of Amazon.On Friday, a final vote count showed that Amazon workers in Staten Island voted to unionize, 2,654 for a union, 2,131 against. Another vote to organize workers in Alabama hangs in the balance. Amazon beat off the union drive by 118 votes but the final tally is awaiting a review of 416 challenged ballots.O’Brien said he applauds any organization that seeks to take on Amazon: “I commend anybody who tries to take on a schoolyard bully like Amazon.”The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union is seeking to unionize an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, while a new, independent union, the Amazon Labor Union, was behind the organizing at two Amazon facilities on Staten Island.O’Brien said that no union is better positioned than the Teamsters to organize Amazon because his 1.3-million-member union has decades of experience in unionizing and winning good contracts for warehouse workers and truck drivers. “This is the only union that has the proven track record of organizing workers in these industries,” O’Brien said.He said the Teamsters needed to organize Amazon as an obligation to “our members” and “our largest employers”, most notably United Parcel Service and DHL. Concerned that Amazon’s lower pay is undercutting Teamster employers and Teamster contracts, O’Brien said he didn’t want Amazon to threaten the livelihood of Teamsters or “diminish the standards established by collective bargaining agreements”.“We have to organize Amazon,” he said. “We have to have a plan in place. We have to execute that plan and not be scared to change that plan if it doesn’t work at times. Even a world champion team doesn’t win all the time. Hopefully we will have a favorable win-to-loss ratio.”Before winning a five-year term as Teamsters’ president, O’Brien headed a large Teamsters local in the Boston area for 15 years. He succeeded James P Hoffa, who stepped down after 23 years as Teamsters president.“We the Teamsters have the best resources out there, not just financially” to unionize Amazon, O’Brien said. “We have the ability to utilize our members who work in the industry, who know the benefits of working under a collective bargaining agreement and having dignity and respect in the workplace.“We have a lot of work to do,” he continued. “We have a plan to focus on the big metro cities,” where he said the likelihood of winning unionization elections would be greatest. He said that the Teamsters would mount “non-traditional campaigns” that include up lining politicians’ support and extensive community support behind unionization. He stressed the importance of worker-to-worker organizing: “We need to utilize our best organizers: our worker members who work in these industries.”Amazon officials say their company’s pay levels are competitive – $18 for a full-time entry-level worker in Staten Island and nearly $16 in Alabama. The company notes that its benefits, including health coverage, begin for full-time workers the day they join the company.Amazon officials have repeatedly said they are committed to maintaining an environment where its employees can thrive and feel appreciated and respected.News of the Staten Island victory comes as union activity is experiencing a resurgence in the US. Joe Biden has positioned himself as the most pro-union president in generations.“The Biden administration has done a great job for unions right out of the gate,” O’Brien said. “An administration that’s not afraid to endorse unions is great.” He praised, in particular, a 2021 law that Biden backed that helped secure the pensions of millions of union members and retirees, including many Teamsters whose pension plans were seriously underfunded.O’Brien said the Teamsters and other unions need to do a far better job explaining to Americans how unions lift workers and the nation as a whole. He said many Americans view the Teamsters favorably despite the movie The Irishman about scandals inside the Teamsters a half-century ago. “During the worst pandemic we’ll ever face people saw that we delivered packages, did trash pick-ups, did food and grocery deliveries,” O’Brien said. “We’ve proven our worth providing goods and services to keep this country moving.”He talked at length about the importance of holding politicians accountable, especially when they fail to back workers and unions. “I can’t remember people’s birthdays. But I can remember the last person that screwed me. That’s how we’re going to deal with those politicians who vote against us. We’ll run people against you. We’ll campaign against you.”TopicsAmazonUS unionsBiden administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Madison Cawthorn: the Republican building himself in Trump’s imageThe North Carolina representative is becoming one of the fastest rising stars in his party – but has also found himself condemned by some on his own side The way he told it, Madison Cawthorn was set to go to the prestigious US Naval Academy before a car crash left him partially paralysed.Congressman Madison Cawthorn under fire over claims of DC drugs and orgiesRead moreAccording to Cawthorn, he had also been accepted into Harvard and Princeton, and worked full-time for a congressman, before being elected to the House of Representatives.Like Cawthorn’s repeated allegations of election fraud, none of those things were wholly true. Yet that hasn’t stopped the North Carolinian, who at 26 is the youngest member of Congress, from becoming one of the fastest-rising stars in the Republican party.The pro-Trump Republican was among speakers at the Save America rally which prefaced the violent insurrection at the US Capitol. His combination of fiery if often inaccurate political rhetoric and big-chinned, all-American looks have wooed Maga Republicans and inflamed Democrats in equal measure.In the past couple of weeks, however, Cawthorn has found himself condemned ​​by some on his own side.First, he verbally attacked Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president who has been widely praised for his response to Russia’s military onslaught.“Remember that Zelenskiy is a thug,” Cawthorn told an audience in a video obtained by WRAL News. “Remember that the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and is incredibly evil and has been pushing woke ideologies.”The response was swift. For Steve Womack, an Arkansas Republican, it was “not a defensible comment”. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House minority leader, declared: “Madison is wrong.”The furore forced a spokesperson for Cawthorn to claim the congressman was “expressing his displeasure” at how Zelenskiy had “used false propaganda”. The spokesman added: “[Cawthorn] supports Ukraine and the Ukrainian president’s efforts to defend their country against Russian aggression, but does not want America drawn into another conflict through emotional manipulation.”Cawthorn has also courted trouble by telling a podcast he had been invited to orgies in Washington and had seen senior figures using cocaine. Amid complaints from Republicans in Congress, McCarthy and the party whip, Steve Scalise, gave Cawthorn a dressing down – but did not immediately take disciplinary action.With such bombastic remarks and seemingly unquenchable thirst for media coverage, Cawthorn appears to be building himself in Donald Trump’s image. And in some ways, his career to date mirrors that of the twice-impeached former president.Both have been accused of misrepresenting their ties to the military. Both have been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women. Both continue to lie about election fraud. They also share a passion for the spotlight and a generally tenuous relationship with the truth.“He planned on serving his country in the navy, with a nomination to the US Naval Academy in Annapolis,” boomed a Cawthorn advert during his 2020 primary. “But all that changed when tragedy struck.”The tragedy was the car crash that paralyzed Cawthorn. But in fact, Cawthorn had been rejected from the Naval Academy before then, as revealed by AVL Watchdog.Cawthorn was elected anyway. On 6 January 2021, he appeared at the pro-Trump rally near the White House which preceded the Capitol attack. He told the crowd: “The Democrats, with all the fraud they have done in this election, the Republicans hiding and not fighting, they are trying to silence your voice.”‘Predatory behaviour’Cawthorn was raised in the tiny city of Hendersonville, in the mountainous south-west of North Carolina. He was homeschooled and played football but when he was 18 a car his friend was driving crashed into a concrete barrier. Cawthorn has used a wheelchair since.Before entering Congress, he had little work experience. He had worked at Chick-fil-A and part-time – though he has claimed he was a full-time staffer – for a congressman, Mark Meadows, earning $15,000 in 2015 and $3,000 the next year, according to the Washington Post. Cawthorn would succeed Meadows in North Carolina’s 11th district – after Meadows resigned to become Trump’s chief of staff.It was while at Patrick Henry College that Cawthorn allegedly sexually harassed fellow students. In October 2020, a month before his election, more than 150 women signed an open letter accusing Cawthorn of “predatory behaviour”.“His modus operandi was to invite unsuspecting women on ‘joy rides’ in his white Dodge Challenger,” the letter said. “Cawthorn would take young women to secluded areas, lock the doors, and proceed to make unwanted sexual advances. It became a regular warning in the female dorms not to be caught alone with Madison Cawthorn.”In February 2021, BuzzFeed News spoke to more than three dozen people who described instances of sexual harassment or misconduct by Cawthorn.“Looking back now in hindsight, I would have changed how I acted,” Cawthorn told Time.Cawthorn dropped out of Patrick Henry College after one semester, according to the Ashville Citizen-Times, after accumulating “mostly D grades”, which he attributed to continuing pain and a brain injury from the car crash.But if the voters of the 11th district were aware of such accusations, they didn’t seem concerned. Cawthorn won a runoff in the Republican primary and then took the congressional seat, even if his share of the vote, 54.5%, was lower than Meadows achieved in his four terms in office.Cawthorn’s bid was aided by $500,000 from an out-of-state Super Pac, days before the vote.Since entering office, Cawthorn has often been lumped in with hard-right Trumpists like Lauren Boebert, from Colorado, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, from Georgia. But some of his oeuvre is more reminiscent of traditional politicians.“His voting record is not on the right side of the Republican party,” said Chris Cooper, a professor of political science and public affairs at Western Carolina University and a close watcher of Cawthorn’s 13th district.“He’s rhetorically extreme, but his voting behavior doesn’t look out of the ordinary at all. So is he ultra-conservative? No. Is he rhetorically extreme? Absolutely.”Still, that hasn’t stopped Cawthorn from jumping on rightwing hobby horse issues like the alleged liberal ideology being forced on school students and Joe Biden’s mental acuity. Cawthorn has also continued to claim the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” and “rigged”.Last August, he told a crowd: “If our election systems continue to be rigged and continue to be stolen then it’s going to lead to one place and that’s bloodshed.”‘A bigger footprint’All that has brought immense media attention. But Cawthorn could now be in trouble, due to a mess of his own making.In 2021, he said he would run for a different district – only to do an about turn and file for re-election in the 11th district. A raft of Republican challengers have jumped into the race, however, and they are not going away.On Veterans Day last year, Cawthorn announced that he would seek election in the newly rejigged, Republican-friendly 13th congressional district, hundreds of miles from his Hendersonville home.The shift would have brought Cawthorn from the relative obscurity of the far-west of the state to a more densely populated area.“It would have given him a bigger footprint statewide. It would have brought him into the Charlotte media market,” Cooper said. But at the start of February, the North Carolina supreme court ordered that the state’s district map be changed, placing more Democratic voters in the 13th district, rendering it a much less certain Republican victory. Cawthorn turned tail, and filed paperwork to run in the 11th district.If that upsets some voters, Cooper said Cawthorn does have a flair for bringing in cash.“I’ve never seen a politician so adept at fundraising,” Cooper said. “Although he is perhaps even more adept at spending.”Some of those expenditures have raised eyebrows. One of Cawthorn’s most unusual receipts in 2021 was $1,700 to a taxidermist – apparently to create “gifts to be given out to fundraising hosts”. According to OpenSecrets, $2.6m of the $2.8m Cawthorn raised through the end of 2021 has been spent, $1,405,918 on more fundraising.Other receipts were filed for trips to California and Florida, excursions which wouldn’t appear to have much to do with the prosperity of the 11th congressional district of North Carolina.‘Juvenile, ill-informed, belligerent’As well as facing credible challengers in his own party, Cawthorn has drawn attention from Democrats. A group called Fire Madison Cawthorn has urged North Carolina Democrats to change party affiliation so they can vote in the Republican primary for Wendy Nevarez, a less rightwing candidate.“Madison Cawthorn is a clear and present danger to our nation whose re-election must be fought every step of the way,” wrote David Wheeler, president of the American Muckrakers Pac, which is funding the effort.It remains to be seen how much impact such efforts will have, but it is clear there is some dissatisfaction with Cawthorn. In the wake of his “thug” comment about Zelenskiy, two of North Carolina’s most influential newspapers criticized Cawthorn. The Winston-Salem Journal was particularly vigorous.“​​Of all the many, many, many reasons we could find to legitimately criticise North Carolina’s gift to Crazytown, Rep Madison Cawthorn … it’s perhaps his latest exploit that has us truly seeing red,” an op-ed said.In his own district, Cawthorn has been savaged by columnists in the Ashville Citizen-Times.“What we’ve learned about Cawthorn since his election in 2020 is this: he cares about Madison Cawthorn,” John Boyle wrote on 12 March.“He’s a juvenile, ill-informed, belligerent man who spews untrue conspiracy theories, encourages mothers to raise ‘monsters’, inspired the January 6 rioters on to their insurrection and barely bothers to pretend to represent his district.”TopicsRepublicansUS politicsDonald TrumpfeaturesReuse this content More

Sarah Palin announces run for US Congress in AlaskaThe former governor says she will ‘combat the left’s socialist, big-government, America-last agenda’ Sarah Palin has announced her run for Alaska’s only seat in the US House of Representatives, marking her first run for public office in over a decade.“America is at a tipping point,” Palin said in a statement released on her Twitter account announcing her candidacy. “As I’ve watched the far left destroy the country, I knew I had to step up and join the fight.“At this critical time in our nation’s history, we need leaders who will combat the left’s socialist, big-government, America-last agenda,” she said.It will be Palin’s first political campaign since serving as John McCain’s running mate in a campaign that saw Barack Obama elected president in November 2008.Fiery, anti-establishment rhetoric came to define Palin’s vice-presidential campaign, which served as a precursor to the rise of Donald Trump and the modern Republican party.Alaska’s House seat became vacant after the Republican Don Young died suddenly last month at age 88 after serving for more than four decades. Young had held Alaska’s House seat since 1973 and was seeking re-election at the time of his death.Sarah Palin requests new trial after losing New York Times defamation caseRead morePalin is shaking up an already unpredictable race for Alaska’s lone US House seat, where she joins a field of at least 40 candidates. The field includes current and former state legislators and a North Pole city council member named Santa Claus.Palin, a former governor of Alaska, has kept a low profile in Alaska politics since leaving office in 2009, before her term as governor ended.A special primary is set for 11 June. The top four vote-getters will advance to a 16 August special election in which ranked-choice voting will be used, a process in line with a new elections system approved by voters in 2020. The winner will serve the remainder of Young’s term, which expires in January.Others who filed their paperwork by the Friday deadline include the Republican state senator Josh Revak; the Democratic state representative Adam Wool; the independent Al Gross, an orthopedic surgeon who unsuccessfully ran for US Senate in 2020; and Andrew Halcro, a former Republican state lawmaker who is running as an independent. They join a field that includes the Republican Nick Begich, who had positioned himself as a challenger to Young; the Democrat Christopher Constant, an Anchorage assembly member; and John Coghill, a Republican former state lawmaker.Meanwhile, a man who years ago legally changed his name to Santa Claus and serves on the North Pole city council also filed with the state division of elections for the special primary. Claus, who said he had a “strong affinity” for Bernie Sanders, is running as an independent.He said he is not soliciting or raising money. He said the new elections process “gives people like me an opportunity, without having to deal with parties, to throw our hat in the ring”.“I do have name recognition,” he said with a laugh. TopicsSarah PalinUS CongressAlaskaRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Jared Kushner ‘voluntarily’ gives Capitol attack panel information in testimonyKushner becomes first member of Donald Trump’s family to speak to investigators Jared Kushner testified on Thursday before the House select committee investigating the 6 January attack on the Capitol, becoming the first member of Donald Trump’s family to speak to investigators.Democrat Elaine Luria, a member of the select committee, confirmed that Kushner appeared before the panel “voluntarily”, although she would not provide details on what he said.“He was able to voluntarily provide information to us to verify, substantiate, provide his own take on this different reporting,” Luria told MSNBC. “So it was really valuable for us to have the opportunity to speak to him.”Kushner appeared virtually before investigators and spoke to committee counsel, two sources told the Guardian. A spokesperson for the January 6 committee declined to comment about Kushner’s testimony.Kushner is married to Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, and he served as a senior adviser to the former president. However, Kushner was not at the White House on 6 January as the Capitol attack unfolded because he was traveling back to Washington after a trip to Saudi Arabia.One source said before Kushner’s interview that investigators planned to ask him about a text sent by Ginni Thomas, the conservative activist who is married to the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, in the weeks after the election.The Washington Post and CBS News reported last week that Thomas sent a text to Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, on 13 November that seemed to reference Kushner. “Just forwarded to yr gmail an email I sent Jared this am. Sidney Powell & improved coordination now will help the cavalry come and Fraud exposed and America saved,” Thomas wrote.Kushner may have also faced questions from the committee about Trump’s efforts to spread baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. According to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s book Peril, Kushner was involved in conversations about how to delicately tell Trump that he had lost the election to Joe Biden.The White House said Biden would not assert executive privilege over the testimony of Kushner, allowing him to speak to the committee about conversations he may have had with Trump in the days and weeks before the Capitol attack.“The president has spoken to the fact that January 6 was one of the darkest days in our country’s history and that we must have a full accounting of what happened to ensure that it never occurs again,” the White House communications director, Kate Bedingfield, said on Tuesday. “As a result, the White House has decided not to assert executive privilege over the testimony of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.”Asked whether Biden’s decision had been communicated to Kushner’s team, Bedingfield said: “I won’t speak to private communication between our attorneys and his.”Ivanka Trump has said she is in talks to voluntarily appear before the committee, after the Guardian reported that the committee was considering issuing a subpoena to compel her to testify.In a January letter to Trump, Thompson said the committee wanted to question her about what she witnessed in the Oval Office on 6 January. According to testimony from Keith Kellogg, the former national security adviser to Mike Pence, Trump witnessed a conversation during which her father pressured the vice-president to overturn the results of the election. Kellogg also testified that Trump made multiple attempts to convince her father to take action to quell the violence at the Capitol.Thompson requested Trump’s “voluntary cooperation” with the committee, writing: “We respect your privacy, and our questions will be limited to issues relating to January 6th, the activities that contributed to or influenced events on January 6th, and your role in the White House during that period.”Thompson initially proposed that Trump speak to the committee on 3 or 4 February, but those dates came and went without any progress. It remains unclear when Trump might testify or if she will provide any substantive information to the committee.Hugo Lowell contributed to this reportTopicsUS Capitol attackJared KushnerHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Senate deal on drastically pared-down Covid aid package may be imminentThe $10bn in funds is half the amount the White House sought and slashes aid for global vaccine drives The US Senate is coming close to reaching agreement on a pared-down $10bn emergency aid package for Covid response, amid anger that the deal looks likely to ditch most funding for critical global vaccine efforts.Senate leaders were indicating to reporters on Friday that a deal was within reach, with a possible vote over the next week. But the package is a pale reflection of the original White House request for $22bn, cutting deep into even the most recent proposal set at $15.6bn.A large slice of the savings will probably be made at the expense of efforts to support vaccination drives around the world. The Biden administration had asked for $5bn, but as final talks continued it appeared that the amount for global aid could be slashed to as little as $1bn.Leading Democrats have expressed dismay at the reduction in planned global vaccine efforts. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, called the latest proposal “shameful”, pointing out that low vaccination rates in parts of the world run the risk of new Covid variants arising.“We have said, we have pronounced, everyone knows: none of us is safe, unless all of us are safe,” Pelosi said.Chris Coons, Democratic senator from Delaware, also decried the global cuts as shortsighted. “There are 2.5 billion people unvaccinated in the world, and that is an ongoing daily risk to the United states,” he told the Washington Post.Some top Republicans also expressed unease. Mitch McConnell, the minority leader in the Senate, told Punchbowl News that it would be “terribly unfortunate” if international vaccine support were removed from the final deal.Much of the funding currently earmarked in the proposals would go towards domestic treatments for people with Covid-19 in order to help outcomes and to reduce stress on hospitals. Another slice of the money would go towards research on new vaccines and treatments.One concern about the reduction in funds is that the US could become less prepared in the event of a renewed surge of infection. Average cases have plateaued in recent days, though there is still concern about BA 2, the new contagious Omicron subvariant that is now dominant in the US and that has seen a spike in Europe and the UK.The United Nations has repeatedly warned about low vaccination rates in parts of the world. Earlier this month the UN high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, lamented the “grim reality” that only 13% of people in low-income countries were vaccinated compared with almost 79% in high-income countries.“The result is more than 60,000 deaths per week, along with an increased risk of the emergence of new variants,” she said.TopicsCoronavirusUS SenateUS politicsnewsReuse this content More