US Politics

InterviewSilicon Holler: Ro Khanna says big tech can help heal the US heartlandLauren Gambino in Washington As part of his drive to use tech to close social divides, the California Democrat has written a book, Dignity in the Digital AgeShortly after Silicon Valley sent him to Washington, Ro Khanna visited “Silicon Holler”, a name coined by a colleague, Hal Rogers, for the fledgling tech sector in eastern Kentucky.Gentrification destroyed the San Francisco I knew. Austin is next | Patrick BresnanRead moreThe two congressmen’s districts had little in common. Khanna’s was among the wealthiest, most diverse and most Democratic. Rogers’ was among the poorest, whitest and most Republican.But when he visited Rogers’ district, in once-prosperous coal country, the California Democrat did not meet with resentment. Desire to participate in the digital revolution was there. Only opportunity was lacking.“In my district, young people wake up optimistic about the future – there’s $11tn in market value in the district and surrounding areas,” Khanna said.“But for many working-class Americans, across the country, globalization has not worked. It’s meant jobs going offshore. It’s meant the shuttering of communities and it’s meant that their kids have to leave their hometowns.“We need to figure out how to bring economic opportunity for the modern economy to these communities that have been left out.”In his new book, Dignity in a Digital Age, Khanna lays out his vision for democratizing the digital economy. He wants the tech industry to expand to places like Paintsville, Kentucky, and Jefferson, Iowa, where the Guardian watched him make his case.Khanna is an intellectual property lawyer who taught economics at Stanford before serving as the congressman for California’s 17th district, home to companies like Apple and Intel. The top contributors to his most recent campaign were employees of Alphabet, Google’s parent company.And yet Khanna is a member of the Congressional Antitrust Caucus and was a co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign. He says tech companies must be held accountable for harm, and has backed regulatory and privacy reforms.Two senators, Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, and Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, have introduced legislation to stop tech platforms disadvantaging smaller rivals. Khanna calls it a “promising” start. Despite fierce opposition from large tech companies, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act was voted out of committee this month on a bipartisan vote, 16–6.A House committee passed a version of the bill last year. Khanna, however, was critical of that effort, warning that the language was imprecise and could have unintended consequences. His nuanced views on tech and its impact on the economy and democracy have helped make him a rare figure in Washington and Silicon Valley, taken seriously by politicos and entrepreneurs alike.“You can’t just have the tools of antitrust and think, ‘OK, now we’re going to have jobs in Youngstown or jobs in New Albany,’” Khanna said. “You want to have antitrust so new competitors can emerge but then you also need a strategy for getting jobs into these communities.”Antitrust: Hawley and Klobuchar on the big tech battles to comeRead moreKhanna says Silicon Valley has a responsibility to address inequality it helped create. Tech companies would benefit, he argues, from a diversity of talent and lower costs of living. Such a shift, he says, would help revitalize communities devastated by the decline of manufacturing and construction, and by automation and outsourcing, thereby allowing young people to find good jobs without leaving their home towns.For years, Khanna said, the notion met resistance. But millions have transitioned to remote work during the coronavirus pandemic, pushing tech companies to embrace changing practices. He says he has gone from “swimming against the tide” to “skiing down the mountain”, so much so that an industry friend said he had put into practice many of the ideas Khanna outlines in his book.“It’s amazing how people go from, ‘It’s impossible’ to ‘It’s already been done’ as if there are no steps in between,” Khanna said. “The truth is, it’s not impossible, but it hasn’t already been done. My book is sort of an accelerant for what is now taking place.”Early in the pandemic, tech workers fled San Francisco for smaller cities in neighboring states. While the transplants brought new business and wealth, in some places they widened wage gaps and drove up real-estate prices. Growth has to be planned, Khanna says.“It’s important to learn some of the lessons and the mistakes of the Valley. There has to be more housing supply, there has to be proper conditions for workers and fair wages so you don’t have the stark inequality that you see in Silicon Valley, where you have, in certain communities, 50% of people’s income going to rent because rents are so high.”Khanna thinks bridging the digital divide might also begin to alleviate polarization that Donald Trump exploited.“Just having good economic empowerment and prosperity for rural Americans, for Black Americans, for Latino Americans is not a silver bullet for becoming a multiracial, multi-ethnic democracy,” he said. “But it could be a starting point.”He has called for billions in federal investments in research, manufacturing and workforce development; building tech hubs that emphasize regional expertise, such as a hub in eastern Washington state to focus on lumber technology; providing tax incentives for federal contractors who employ workers in rural areas; underwriting training programs at historically black colleges; and expanding Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) in public schools.Such ideas have captured the attention of Joe Biden’s White House, as it looks to expand opportunity at home and counter China abroad.This week, House Democrats turned to a bill that aims to make the US more competitive with China by strengthening technology, manufacturing and research, including incentives for producing computer chips, which are in short supply.The plan incorporates key planks of Khanna’s Endless Frontier Act, including the establishment of a Directorate for Science and Engineering Solutions. A similar measure passed the Senate with unusual bipartisan support last year but House Republicans seem less amenable.“We need to produce things in this country, including technology, and have the supply chains here,” Khanna said. “Everyone now recognizes that it’s a huge challenge for America to have semiconductors produced in Taiwan and South Korea. With the shipping costs and the disruption with Covid, it has created huge challenges in America from manufacturing cars to making electronics.”‘Can we get more Republicans?’With much of the Democrats’ agenda stalled, Khanna believes the new bill can provide a second major bipartisan accomplishment for the party to tout in a difficult midterms campaign.Billionaire Republican backer donates to Manchin after he killed key Biden billRead more“Can we get more Republicans than voted for the infrastructure bill?” Khanna said, recalling 13 who crossed the aisle. “That’s the barometer.”Khanna, who is also a deputy whip for the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Democrats must be ready to accept a less ambitious version of Biden’s Build Back Better domestic spending plan. That is in limbo after Joe Manchin – a senator from West Virginia, the kind of state to which Khanna wants to bring tech jobs – announced his opposition.“A big pillar of [the spending plan] should be climate,” Khanna said, “and then let’s get a couple more things that can get support from Senator Manchin, like establishing universal pre-K and expanding Medicaid.”When it comes to combatting climate change and easing child and healthcare costs, he said, “something is certainly better than nothing”.
Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work For All Of Us is published in the US by Simon & Schuster
TopicsBooksPolitics booksDemocratsSilicon ValleyUS politicsCaliforniaUS domestic policyinterviewsReuse this content More

Butt of the joke: Bette Midler fires back at West Virginia governor Jim JusticeActor and activist says ‘dog’s ass would make a better governor’ after State of the State speech stunt goes viral Bette Midler had harsh words for the governor of West Virginia after he showed his dog’s backside at the end of his State of the State speech, in a bizarre rejoinder to the actor, singer and activist.Billionaire Republican backer donates to Manchin after he killed key Biden billRead moreResponding on Thursday to a tweet in which Midler called West Virginia “poor, illiterate and strung out”, the Republican Jim Justice said she could kiss his dog’s “hiney”.On Friday, Midler retweeted a picture of the stunt with the caption: “Here we can see a dog’s asshole. Right next to it is the butt of Jim Justice’s dog.”Midler also tweeted: “Here are the state rankings of all the areas and agencies for which the so-called ‘governor’ of West Virginia, Jim Justice, is responsible. Judging from these rankings, I’d say his dog’s ass would make a better governor than him!”The graphic, from US News and World Report, showed West Virginia scoring poorly in healthcare, education, economy and other categories and 47th overall among the 50 US states. The state tends to score poorly in such rankings.Justice, 70, a coalmining magnate who was elected as a Democrat, is an eccentric figure who often uses his English bulldog, Babydog, as a political prop. His State of the State speech, at the capitol in Charleston, was delayed after he contracted Covid-19.Midler angered the governor with comments in December that were prompted by her own anger towards the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin.Manchin, a Democrat, that month sank Joe Biden’s Build Back Better spending plan. This month, he stood in the way of Senate reform to facilitate the passage of voting rights protections.“What Joe Manchin, who represents a population smaller than Brooklyn, has done to the rest of America, who wants to move forward, not backward, like his state, is horrible,” Midler tweeted.“He sold us out. He wants us all to be just like his state, West Virginia. Poor, illiterate and strung out.”She later apologised to “the good people” of West Virginia.On Thursday, Justice chose to end an address in which he said too many people “doubted” West Virginians and “told every bad joke in the world about us” by lifting up his pet and flashing its bottom to the cameras and crowd.“Babydog tells Bette Midler and all those out there: Kiss her hiney,” he said as the crowd applauded. Attendees included lawmakers, state supreme court justices and agency heads. Members of a high school girl’s basketball team Justice coaches were present in the gallery.Shawn Fluharty, a Democratic state delegate, said: “The governor brought his Babydog and pony show to the State of the State and pulled this stunt as some bold statement.“It was nothing short of embarrassing and beneath the office. Jim Justice habitually lowers the bar of our state. They don’t laugh with us, but at us.”TopicsBette MidlerWest VirginiaRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

January 6 panel subpoenas figures in scheme backing fake Trump electorsHouse committee seeks to determine whether Trump White House was behind plan to send false certificates to Congress The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack on Friday issued subpoenas to lead participants in an audacious scheme to send fake Trump slates of electors to Congress.The development comes as the panel seeks to learn whether the plan was coordinated by the Trump White House.The fake certificates – which falsely declared Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 election, though the states had officially declared otherwise – are significant as they appear to have been a central tenet of the former president’s effort to return himself to power.Capitol attack committee has spoken to Trump AG William Barr, chairman saysRead moreThe fake slates of electors were sent to Congress from seven contested states that were in fact won by Joe Biden. Trump and his allies might have hoped to use them as justification for having Biden’s wins in those states rejected.Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the select committee, said that he had authorized subpoenas to 14 Republicans who were listed as the chairperson and the secretary of each group of “alternate electors” in order to learn how the scheme was coordinated.The move by the select committee comes days after the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, confirmed that the justice department had opened an investigation into the scheme, raising the stakes for the fake electors and any Trump White House aides who may have been involved.Thompson issued subpoenas to the two most senior Republicans who signed onto the fake certificates in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, including several prominent current and former state Republican party leaders.The subpoena targets included: Nancy Cottle, Loraine Pellegrino, David Shafer, Shawn Still, Kathy Berden, Mayra Rodriguez, Jewll Powdrell, Deborah Maestas, Michael McDonald, James DeGraffenreid, Bill Bachenberg, Lisa Patton, Andrew Hitt and Kelly Ruh.Trump’s plan to return himself to office rested on two elements: the existence, or possible existence, of alternate slates, and then-vice president Mike Pence using the ambiguity of “dueling slates” for Trump and Biden to reject those results at Biden’s certification.The effort to subvert the results of the 2020 election at the joint session of Congress on 6 January fell apart after Pence refused to abuse his ceremonial role to certify the results, and it was clear the “alternate slates” were not legitimate certificates.But in some cases, top officials, such as Republican National Committee members Berden and DeGraffenreid and former state GOP chairs Hitt and Maestas, signed the fake certificates that used official state seals and sent them to the National Archives.“The phony electors were part of the plan to create chaos on Jan. 6,” said congressman Jamie Raskin, a member of the select committee. “The fake slates were an effort to create the illusion of contested state results,” as “a pretext for unilateral rejection of electors.”The panel is seeking to examine whether the effort was coordinated by the Trump White House and whether it amounted to a crime, according to a source familiar with the investigation. The subpoenas compel the production of documents and testimony through February.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesRepublicansDonald TrumpUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

Billionaire Republican backer donates to Manchin after he killed key Biden billHome Depot co-founder Ken Langone, author of I Love Capitalism!, said of the Democratic senator: ‘Thank God for Joe Manchin’ A billionaire Republican donor and Trump supporter donated the maximum allowed amount to Joe Manchin after the West Virginia Democrat sank Joe Biden’s signature domestic spending plan.The Build Back Better plan sought to boost health and social care, and to help combat the climate crisis, at a price tag of $1.75tn.‘He’s a villain’: Joe Manchin attracts global anger over climate crisisRead moreManchin, one of two key swing votes in the 50-50 Senate, used a Fox News Sunday interview in December to say he was finally a “no” on the legislation.The move appeared to surprise Biden, and enraged progressives, but Ken Langone was presumably delighted.The co-founder of Home Depot and author of a 2018 book called I Love Capitalism! had signaled his support for Manchin before the senator made his move on Build Back Better.“I don’t see leadership any place in this country. Thank God for Joe Manchin,” Langone told CNBC in November. “I’m going to have one of the biggest fundraisers I’ve ever had for him. He’s special. He’s precious. He’s a great American.”Manchin voted for Biden’s earlier Covid relief and stimulus package, as well as for a bipartisan infrastructure bill, but helped to water down both.In December, shortly after Manchin torpedoed Biden’s flagship legislation, Langone and his wife each gave $5,000 to Manchin’s Country Roads political action committee, CNBC reported. The amount is the most any individual can give in a year.CNBC also listed donations from major corporations that helped Country Roads raise more than $150,000 more in December than it did in November.Manchin is next up for re-election in 2024. As the only Democrat in a high office in West Virginia, he holds outsized power in the evenly divided Senate – a position that would change if Republicans take back the chamber in November.Langone has contributed to Democrats but predominantly supports Republicans. He backed Trump in 2016, and continued to support him throughout Trump’s tenure in the White House, though he chided him over the Capitol riot.CNBC reported that Langone has recently made much larger donations than to Manchin, including $1m to a fund that works to defeat Democratic senators and half a million dollars to Americans for Prosperity Action, a group backed by the hard-right Koch family.In his book I Love Capitalism!, Langone writes of his fear of socialism in the US, a fear stoked by the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’s run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.Some young Americans, Langone says, think the US “should be headed toward something that, in my mind, resembles socialism: guaranteed income. Free college tuition. Single-payer healthcare.“I disagree. Strongly.”He also writes that he disagrees “not (as you might believe) because I’m a rich guy trying to hold on to my money. I disagree because socialism is based on the false notion that we should all be exactly equal in every single way.”Neither Langone nor Manchin immediately responded to requests for comment.TopicsJoe ManchinUS political financingUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Seditious conspiracy is rarely proven. The Oath Keepers trial is a litmus testExtensive planning and tangible action by the far-right militia group’s members provide ‘strong grounds’ for case, experts say Later this year the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia and nine alleged co-conspirators will be the first to face trial on seditious conspiracy charges related to the insurrection at the US Capitol.Outrage as Newt Gingrich says Capitol attack investigators could be jailedRead moreThe charges are significant because they allege that the January 6 attack went beyond disorderly conduct and assaults on law enforcement, instead constituting an organized and violent attempt to stop the democratic transfer of power.But because sedition charges so rarely go to trial, there isn’t a great deal of precedent for how such trials proceed, experts say. And US prosecutors have a checkered history in securing sedition convictions. “It’s been used in ways that have been absurd and has been used in ways that were slam dunks,” said Joshua Braver, an assistant professor of law at the University of Wisconsin.But unlike some previous uses of seditious conspiracy, many experts say the case against the Oath Keepers is strong. “This case is different. This case is a plan that was executed and the federal government is on much stronger grounds,” Braver said. “If anything is seditious conspiracy, this is it.”The checkered history of seditious conspiracy trialsSeditious conspiracy is a broad statute that concerns attempts to overthrow the government, levy war against it or prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law. It also can be applied in cases where suspects seize any government property and carries up to 20 years in prison if convicted.Partly because seditious conspiracy allegations carry so much political weight, prosecutors have generally been hesitant to bring such charges in the past.“Seditious conspiracy charges are rarely used in American jurisprudence,” said Jeffrey Ian Ross, a criminologist and expert on political crime at the University of Baltimore. Prosecutors can be wary of issuing such charges, even in cases that may fall under its broad statute, he added.The last successfully prosecuted seditious conspiracy case came in the mid-1990s, when authorities charged Islamist extremist Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine co-conspirators with seditious conspiracy. Prosecutors alleged that Abdel-Rahman and his followers plotted to bomb the United Nations, the FBI building and several other landmarks around New York City.During the trial, prosecutors presented the jury with speeches of Abdel-Rahman and a recording from an FBI informant in which Abdel-Rahman discussed attacking military installations. The defense, meanwhile, argued that Abdel-Rahman’s speech was constitutionally protected and that he never directly planned attacks. After a week of deliberation, jury members convicted the group of seditious conspiracy along with numerous other charges. Abdel-Rahman died in prison in 2017.Decades before the Abdel-Rahman trial, prosecutors secured a seditious conspiracy conviction against Puerto Rican nationalists who stormed the Capitol building. The Puerto Rican independence activist Lolita Lebrón and three accomplices entered the House floor and fired dozens of bullets around the chamber, wounding five legislators. The group, along with numerous people charged as co-conspirators, were convicted of seditious conspiracy and spent over two decades in jail until Jimmy Carter commuted their sentence in 1979.Other seditious conspiracy cases have fallen apart once they have gone to trial, including the most recent attempt at the charge in 2012. Prosecutors alleged that nine members of the Christian far-right Hutaree militia committed seditious conspiracy through a plot to kill a police officer and then attack their funeral in order to incite an uprising against the government. The defense successfully argued that militia members’ discussion of violent rebellion was essentially fantastical boasting, protected by the first amendment and that any specific plots were instigated by an FBI informant who had infiltrated the group. The militia members were ultimately acquitted of sedition, albeit with several pleading guilty to less severe weapons charges.A 1988 seditious conspiracy trial involving 13 white supremacists accused of plotting to overthrow the government and assassinate a federal judge provided an even more severe cautionary tale. Prosecutors in the case cut a plea deal with a white supremacist leader, Glenn Miller, who potentially faced decades in prison for other crimes, agreeing to reduce his charges in exchange for him testifying in the sedition trial. But Miller’s testimony turned out to be weak and unreliable, leading to an all-white jury acquitting all 13 white supremacists. The national chaplain of the Ku Klux Klan hugged several defendants following the verdict and touted it as a victory for white nationalism.In the years after the trial, Miller was released from prison and once again became active in the white supremacist movement despite being in the federal witness protection program. In 2014, he killed three people, including a 14-year-old boy, at a Jewish community center and retirement home in Kansas. He died in prison last May.The case against the Oath KeepersThe case against Rhodes and the Oath Keepers is more straightforward than past seditious conspiracy charges against the far right, experts say, both because there appears to be extensive evidence of planning before the Capitol attack and because numerous members took tangible actions to breach the Capitol.Even Rhodes, who is not believed to have actually stormed the building, is alleged to have plotted to bring weapons to the area and coordinate militia movements.In the weeks before the insurrection, Rhodes allegedly purchased tens of thousands of dollars worth of weapons and began communicating to other Oath Keepers in an encrypted group chat. “We aren’t getting through this without a civil war,” he messaged days after the presidential election. One Oath Keeper admitted as part of a plea deal last year that he brought an M4 rifle to a Comfort Inn hotel near the Capitol, while Rhodes and others allegedly discussed “quick reaction force” teams that could move into Washington DC with firearms. Once inside the Capitol, prosecutors state in their indictment that one group of Oath Keepers moved in a military “stack” formation and went in search of the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.The Oath Keepers “coordinated travel across the country to enter Washington, DC, equipped themselves with a variety of weapons, donned combat and tactical gear, and were prepared to answer Rhodes’s call to take up arms”, the charging documents against Rhodes state.Rhodes this week pleaded not guilty to the charges and has repeatedly denied that he has done anything wrong or broken any laws. After federal agents used a warrant to seize his phone in May last year, Rhodes stated that he sat for a nearly three-hour interview with authorities and claimed he had nothing to hide. He claims that Oath Keepers who entered the Capitol went “totally off mission” and that he was only there to prevent his militia members from getting into trouble. At a Texas rally in the months following the insurrection, he told a crowd that he may go to jail for “made-up crimes”.Rhodes was denied bail, in part because the federal judge overseeing his detention hearing stated that the militia leader had installed “elaborate escape tunnels” on his property and posed a flight risk.As one of the most prominent leaders in the far-right movement over the past decade, Rhodes’s trial is set to be the highest-profile case so far in the investigation and one of the most significant domestic extremism cases in years.More than 700 people are charged with crimes related to the insurrection, but the majority of those cases have involved less complex charges that don’t require proving the type of coordination and planning that seditious conspiracy indictments involve. Meanwhile, most of the more than 150 people who have so far pleaded guilty in the investigation have received relatively short sentences or no jail time at all.“They’ve gone for the low-hanging fruit first and things are going to get more interesting as the days go by,” Ross said.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsWashington DCLaw (US)featuresReuse this content More

Who has more influence on supreme court: Clarence Thomas or his activist wife?Justice’s wife, Ginni Thomas, sits on the board of conservative group that backs lawsuit seeking to end affirmative action, raising concerns it could present potential conflict of interest Clarence Thomas, the hardline conservative supreme court justice, is facing calls for his recusal in the case over race-based affirmative action in college admissions that the court agreed to hear this week.US supreme court will hear challenge to affirmative action in college admissionRead moreThe case, which is being brought against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, is the latest potential conflict of interest involving Thomas and his wife Virginia Thomas. Ginni, as she is known, is a prominent rightwing activist who speaks out on a raft of issues that frequently come before the nation’s highest court.A one-person conservative powerhouse, she set up her own lobbying company Liberty Consulting in 2010. By her own description, she has “battled for conservative principles in Washington” for over 35 years.The challenge to the two universities’ race-conscious admissions policies is being brought by Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA). Its leader Edward Blum has been a relentless opponent of affirmative action and voting rights laws.His argument that race-based affirmative action is a quota system that discriminates against Asian students is framed with the supreme court’s newly emboldened rightwing majority in mind. A central player in that new six-justice conservative supermajority is Clarence Thomas, who is the longest-serving of the justices and at 73 will be the oldest once Stephen Breyer retires.Justice Thomas’s influence has soared in recent months with the rightward shift of the court following Donald Trump’s three nominations, to the extent that some pundits now dub him the unofficial chief justice of the court.SFFA’s lawsuit seeking to strike down affirmative action has received the enthusiastic backing of the conservative National Association of Scholars. It filed an amicus brief in support of the suit, accusing Harvard admissions officials of being prejudiced against Asian students and stereotyping them as “uninteresting, uncreative and one-dimensional”.Ginni Thomas sits on the advisory board of the National Association of Scholars. Observers are concerned that her position with a group that has intervened in the affirmative action case could present appearances of conflict of interest.Noah Bookbinder, president of the government ethics watchdog Crew, told the Guardian that while supreme court regulations may not legally require Thomas to recuse himself, there were serious questions to answer.“Ginni Thomas is an advisory board member of an organization that has taken a very specific position on a case in front of her husband. That will make it hard for the public to be confident that he’s going to be totally unbiased.”Bookbinder said that in the circumstances “the better course of action would be for him to recuse or for her to cease her involvement in that organization.”The potential appearance of a conflict of interest over the Harvard case was noted in a recent investigation by the New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer that takes a deep dive into the overlapping interests of the couple. The article chronicles in devastating detail the many instances where Ginni’s political activism appears to present problems for the image and integrity of the court.“Ginni Thomas has held so many leadership or advisory positions at conservative pressure groups that it’s hard to keep track of them,” Mayer concluded. “Many, if not all, of these groups have been involved in cases that have come before her husband.”In the most troubling recent instance, Ginni Thomas lent her voice to Trump’s big lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. She was vocal on the subject in the buildup to the violent insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6 last year that led to the deaths of five people and left more than 100 police officers injured.On the morning of the January 6 itself, Mark Joseph Stern of Slate reported, Thomas posted on her Facebook page words of encouragement for the “Stop the Steal” marchers in Washington. “LOVE MAGA people!!!!”, she said., “GOD BLESS EACH OF YOU STANDING UP or PRAYING!”Soon after the insurrection, Thomas was forced to apologise to her husband’s former supreme court law clerks for comments she made privately to them that appeared to lament Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election. The remarks were sent to a private email list called “Thomas Clerk World”.In the emails, disclosed by the Washington Post, she wrote: “Many of us are hurting, after leaving it all on the field, to preserve the best of this country. I feel I have failed my parents who did their best and taught me to work to preserve liberties.”An even more direct intervention in the politics surrounding Trump and the big lie was made last December when Thomas joined 62 other influential conservatives in signing an open letter to the leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy. It urged him to expel the Congress members Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger from the Republican party.Their sin, the letter writers opined, was to serve on the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. They described the committee as an “overtly partisan political persecution that brings disrespect to our country’s rule of law [and] legal harassment to private citizens who have done nothing wrong”.Since the Capitol insurrection, the Department of Justice has arrested more than 725 defendants in relation to the storming of the building. Federal prosecutors have charged 225 with assaulting, resisting or impeding police officers, including over 75 charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily harm to an officer.Last week the supreme court rejected attempts by Trump to block the January 6 committee from acquiring his White House records from the time of the attack. There was only one dissent from the bench to that 8-to-1 decision: it came from Clarence Thomas.“Ginni Thomas’s activities are unprecedented in supreme court history in terms of a spouse engaging in issues that are constantly before the court,” said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a non-partisan group which advocates supreme court reform. “The appearance of impropriety is in itself impropriety – all the supreme court has is the trust of the public, and once you chip away at that you are in trouble.”Roth added that Thomas’s comments in the days before January 6 were clearly problematic given her husband’s vote on the Trump documents. “It’s possible that the January 6 committee has emails between Ginni Thomas and administration officials from that day or the days leading up to it given how vocal she was. That’s definitely a place where Justice Thomas should have recused himself.”Should the rightwing majority around Thomas use its newfound muscle to ban affirmative action, as is widely predicted, it would mark the negation of more than 30 years of settled constitutional law on the matter. What lies ahead bears strong resemblance to Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that made abortion legal which the court is probably poised to weaken or even overturn outright.Mayer points out in the New Yorker that an amicus brief was filed in the supreme court case challenging Roe by Robert George who also sits on the advisory board of the National Association of Scholars alongside Ginni Thomas.Roth told the Guardian that a simpler solution to the full recusal of Clarence Thomas from the affirmative action case might exist. That would be to remove the National Association of Scholars’ amicus brief.“There is an easy way to deal with this perceived conflict of interest – strike the amicus brief,” he said.It is established practice in all federal appeals courts, though not in the supreme court, that amicus briefs brought by anybody with a connection to a judge hearing a case are routinely thrown out.The president of the National Association of Scholars, Peter Wood, told the Guardian that he knew of no conflict of interest relating to Thomas’s position on the advisory board. “Ms Thomas’s role is to provide advice to NAS in response to questions I put to her about NAS policy and initiatives. I have never discussed with her any NAS matter that was likely to come before the supreme court,” he said.TopicsUS supreme courtUS politicsLaw (US)The far rightRacefeaturesReuse this content More

Interview‘Be thankful you don’t have our poison’: US pollster Frank Luntz’s warning to UKDavid Smith in WashingtonLuntz spent years sampling opinion for Republicans before a stroke changed his outlook: ‘I’m not afraid any more, so you will hear me criticise people I never would have two years ago’ When he suffered a stroke, Frank Luntz blamed it on the anger and tension coursing through him after decades of inhaling America’s toxic political culture. The country’s best-known pollster found himself hospitalised for nearly a week with dangerously high blood pressure.Two years later, Luntz regards the experience as a turning point. “That completely changed my outlook,” he says. “The loudness of my voice has changed. The speed in which I speak is changed. I’m slower and I’m quieter and I think about what I say. It’s not that I’m trying to be careful, it’s that I really analyse stuff that comes out.”The 59-year-old, well known from countless media appearances and for running focus groups that provide an insight into America’s political psyche, has also now chosen a less partisan path. Having once worked for rightwing Republicans such as Pat Buchanan, Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani, he no longer hesitates to condemn Donald Trump’s pernicious influence or fears the conservative media backlash.Attack, attack, attack: Republicans drive to make Biden the bogeymanRead more“If I didn’t die, I’m not afraid any more, so you will hear me criticise people I never would have criticised two years ago. What are they going to do to me? It can’t be any worse than what I’ve been through and, when you become more fearless, it makes life easier to navigate.”Often seen on TV as ebullient and garrulous, Luntz has felt tired all the time following the stroke. He is visibly so as he holds court with half a dozen British newspaper journalists in his downtown Washington luxury condo, a kitsch affair with faux classical columns, built-in saloon bar (“Frank’s sports bar”) and busts of presidents George Washington (wearing a mask) and Abraham Lincoln.Luntz’s motivation for this unusual gathering, it seems, is to express gratitude to Britain. He is one of those old school American conservatives who says, “I believe in the special relationship very much,” and is tickled by how the nations rhyme and how they don’t. Last year he went to the UK for a month and ended up staying nearly eight, finding an antidote to American’s poison.“I was in real trouble when I got to Britain, in real emotional trouble,” he admits. “I still haven’t fully recovered from my stroke, and what goes on in this country, I couldn’t talk about it. I got in the middle of it. Tucker Carlson [a host on Fox News] was killing me every fucking night.”Luntz, who studied British voters for a conservative thinktank, the Centre for Policy Studies, also invited UK journalists to disseminate a warning: don’t let British politics become as polarised and debased as the American system.“You still like each other, you still respect each other, you still value public debate: your democracy is still functioning,” he insists. “Ours has seized up and I don’t know how to get ours flowing again. Be thankful that you don’t have our poison … I’m very afraid of the American system being hopelessly damaged.”Doesn’t the acrimony of the post-Brexit era suggest that the UK is already heading in that direction? Not so, Luntz insists. “You all have proven that there’s still a desire for substance in politics, not just slogans and soundbites, and thank God you haven’t completely embraced American politics because your elections are of substance rather than style.“I know that you guys are critical of the UK in recent times for being too American in your elections. You’re not. We are becoming more and more superficial. You are still substantial.”Later he plays a video clip of one of his US focus groups descending into angry shouting and recriminations, a glimpse of a society that seems to be falling apart. He comments: “The worst of the worst. This is my warning to you. This is shit. This is a disaster and it will come to you if you let it happen.”During his time in Britain, Luntz met several prime ministers in quick succession: John Major (“he’s the most sensible person in the UK”), Tony Blair (“brilliant – he gets it more than anyone”), David Cameron (“still the best communicator that I’ve ever worked with”) and Boris Johnson (“the most fun: when I saw him, he spent 10 minutes just ripping me before I even got to the stuff I wanted to show him because we knew each other at Oxford”), who had not yet become embroiled in “partygate”.Ever the anglophile, Luntz does not share a view expressed by Joe Biden in 2019 that Johnson is a “physical and emotional clone” of Trump. “Boris Johnson has written more books than Donald Trump has read. Boris is the real Trump. He understands the hopes and dreams of the public. He gets the historic context. He can wax poetically about 2,000 years ago, 200 years ago and two years ago. Trump could not do that.“Trump captured the anger and the desire for revenge; that is not Boris at all. Think about it: Boris is amusing whereas Trump was vitriolic and mean; Boris is compelling whereas Trump was insulting. There’s a big difference. Boris is more likable, more approachable, more human than Trump was. Trump is more the middle finger; Boris was the kind of guy that you wanted to hang out with at the pub.”Last week Luntz was hired by the New York Times to take the temperature of 14 independent voters after Biden’s first year in the White House. They weren’t happy. “Biden does not understand the hopes and dreams of the average American,” says the messaging expert, who remains on the centre-right. “He does not empathise with them. His team is ideological rather than emotional and so he’s missing all this. It’s how people feel even more than how they think; feeling is a deeper emotion and Biden is not connecting to them at all.“Inflation is ‘transitory’? The line that I would use would be we should transitory Joe Biden right out of office, and the public would do that. Secondly, you got Kamala Harris, who comes across as inauthentic with that laugh. He picked her up and put her there, so they’re regarded as a team, and as a team they’re failing.”Biden’s approval rating is hovering in the dismal low 40s as the coronavirus pandemic drags on interminably. Luntz argues that he overpromised. “He created unrealistic expectations. He’s a very arrogant human being and very flawed and the combination of flaws and arrogance is a really unhealthy cocktail.”Wasn’t Biden supposed to be Mr Empathy? “There’s nothing about him that screams empathy. There’s everything about him that screams someone who’s already made up their mind.”A referendum on Biden looms in the midterm elections in November. Luntz agrees with the conventional wisdom that Republicans will win the House of Representatives but thinks Democrats will cling on to the Senate. He identifies six issues that will determine voters’ choices: crime, immigration, shortages, prices, education and the January 6 insurrection. “Democrats have a huge problem on five out of the six.”Prices, the cost of living, are the biggest problem. “This is the issue that’s going to kill the Democrats because it affects every single voter in every possible way every day of the year, whether it’s food or fuel, whether they’re trying to buy a house or car or something small. They know that it’s impacting them and it’s going to continue for a little while longer. Every day that it continues, you can assume that another member of Congress loses their job. It’s that big a deal.”An Atlantic magazine interview with Luntz in 2014, a year before Trump began his run for president, was prophetic about his health as a metaphor for America. He complained about a six-day headache and sleeping two or three hours at a time. Voters were “contentious and argumentative” and “didn’t listen to each other as they once had”. The article’s author, Molly Ball, wrote: “Frank Luntz is having some kind of crisis. I just can’t quite get my head around it.”Today, after the catharsis of his stroke, Luntz finds plenty of blame to go around. He casts a harsh light on the media, social media and his own younger self. In an infamous 2003 memo, for example, he advised George W Bush’s Republican party to abandon the phrase “global warming” in favour of “climate change” because it is “less frightening”. He is now an advocate of climate legislation. “I’ll take my blame for the stuff that I did 20 years ago. But I figured it out.”He touches a button and a giant painting of man walking on the moon slides up to reveal a TV screen and slideshow presentation of polling data entitled The Great Rethink. It is a study of America voters’ attitudes and disillusionment with their leaders. “The only thing we agree on is that politicians suck,” Luntz says. “If you’re American, this is a very depressing time right now.”One slide is about what people want most in life: fewer hassles, more money, no worries, better work, more choices, more time, better lifestyle, better work-life balance. Another offers some words to use (I am your voice, accountability, fact-based) and words to lose (agenda, I’m listening, transparency).Luntz argues that even in a polarised society such as America, every parent asks the same question: will my child/grandchild be happy? Perhaps rather optimistically, he urges politicians to focus on children as “the great unifier”.“If you want to bring people together, you do it over their children. You guys are divided on just about everything; this crushes that divide. This brings people together and it’s not been done before. I’m waiting for a political party or movement to capture the next generation as their focus.”Luntz, who does not think he will be in the polling business much longer, hopes politicians will consider the lessons of his “Great Rethink” presentation and rethink their own ways before democracy seizes up for good. “I want to hit them over the head with this,” he says. “I want to be able to say to them: cut it out. Just stop. Nothing is worth destroying the country – and you are this close to destroying the country.”TopicsUS politicsJoe BidenDemocratsRepublicansUS midterm elections 2022interviewsReuse this content More