US Politics

Republican resistance to Trump rings hollow as ‘moderates’ say no on voting rights Romney, Cheney and others were hailed as the conscience of the party but their deeds in the Senate have provoked accusations of hypocrisyThey have been hailed as the conscience of the Republican party, heroes of the resistance to former US president Donald Trump’s hostile takeover.But Senator Mitt Romney, Congresswoman Liz Cheney and others this month helped kill off a voting rights bill that Democrats say is essential to protecting democracy from a Trump-driven onslaught.Texts show Fox News host Hannity’s pleas to Trump aide after Capitol attackRead moreThe blanket opposition from these Republicans is provoking criticism that their professed rejection of the ex-president rings hollow and, despite their lofty words, they are ultimately helping further his authoritarian agenda.“They might not like Trump but they have the character of Trump,” said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. “The reason why Trump was able to lead their party is because he is a good representation. He’s a liar; they lie. They’ve decided to use any means necessary to maintain power. If that means political corruption, they decide that they’re going to go that route.”Black Voters Matter and other groups warn that Republican-led states across the country are passing laws making it more difficult for African Americans and others to vote by consolidating polling locations, requiring certain types of identification and ordering other changes.In response Democrats in the House of Representatives last week passed the Freedom to Vote: John R Lewis Act, which would make election day a national holiday, ensure access to early voting and mail-in ballots and enable the justice department to intervene in states with a history of voter interference.The legislation was also supported by all 50 Democrats in the Senate but collapsed this week when Republicans used a procedural rule known as the filibuster to block it in the evenly divided chamber. Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, then called on a vote on changing Senate rules to allow the chamber to pass the bill by a simple majority vote. Again all Republicans were opposed, and now they were joined by Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginian and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, ensuring a 52-48 defeat.It was a bitter defeat for Joe Biden just hours after he held a marathon press conference on Wednesday marking the end of his first year in office. “I am profoundly disappointed,” the president said in a statement.Much liberal fury was focused on Democratic holdouts Manchin and Sinema. But their intransigence only mattered because all the Republicans – including so-called moderates – stood firm against legislation that aims to combat voter suppression, which largely impacts communities of color. Even those who claim to be fiercely anti-Trump.Romney, a former presidential nominee, is a prime example. He was the only senator to break with his party by voting to convict Trump for abuse of power in his first impeachment trial in 2020. He was then one of seven Republicans to find Trump guilty of incitement of insurrection at his second impeachment trial last year.“Well, I like Mitt,” Biden told reporters at the press conference lasting nearly two hours. “Look, Mitt Romney is a straight guy.”Yet by then Romney, senator for Utah, had already spelled out his opposition to the voting rights legislation, dismissing it as a partisan takeover of federal elections and even comparing it to Trump’s false claim of election rigging in 2020.Romney was not alone. Senator Ben Sasse of Utah, who also voted to convict Trump at last year’s impeachment trial, described the push to defend voting rights as a “charade” to satisfy a minority “addicted to rage on Twitter”, adding: “It’s bad for America. It’s just as undermining of public trust in elections as what Donald Trump did last year.”Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rob Portman and Tim Scott, all of whom have spoke out against Trump at various times, opposed the bill. In the earlier House vote, NeverTrumpers Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger also toed the party line.Cheney, vice chair of the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, has earned bipartisan admiration from some unlikely quarters. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman even floated the idea of her becoming Biden’s running mate in the 2024 election.But the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney made clear last year she did not see connection between Trump’s “big lie” about 2020 and the blitz of voter restrictions imposed by Republican state legislatures. “I will never understand the resistance, for example, to voter ID,” Cheney told Axios on HBO. Some commentators agree that there is nothing inconsistent about decrying Trump’s assault on democracy and rejecting Democrats’ sweeping proposals.Michael Steele, the first African American to serve as chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “You can be against Donald Trump and have a policy view on voting rights – I would personally maybe disagree with it – that would not lead them to support the proposed legislation in the House or the Senate.”But some conservative critics of Trump admit that the reforms, which they regard as an example of government overreach at the expense of states’ autonomy (even though article I of the constitution explicitly authorises Congress to set federal election rules), put them in a quandary.Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, said: “I am vehemently anti-Trump, but anti- what the Democrats are trying to do at the federal level, so I’d be in the same grouping. Republicans are doing a bunch of shit but the answer to that in my mind is not bad, unconstitutional federal legislation.”But Walsh objects to Romney’s attempt to equate Trump’s lies with Biden’s policy. “I disagree with Mitt and any other Republican that’s making any sort of comparisons between what Trump did to our elections and what Democrats are doing.”This week’s vote was also the latest marker of the Republican party’s transformation in the Trump era. Sixteen of its current senators voted to re-authorise the Voting Rights Act in 2006 but opposed the latest bill, which would update the most powerful part of the law. Republican presidents Ronald Reagan, George H W Bush and George W Bush all supported its renewal.Antjuan Seawright, a senior adviser to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, took issue with Romney and colleagues’ claim that Republicans are not making it harder for minorities to vote. “It’s intellectually dishonest for anyone to say that there’s not an effort to suppress, suffocate and silence the votes of Black people in particular around this country. All you have to do is look at the bills that have been filed and where they have been filed,” he said.With the voting rights measures aimed at safeguarding democracy now apparently dead in the water, it may be harder for independents, liberals and others to heap praise on anti-Trump Republicans in quite the same way as before.Kurt Bardella, an adviser to the Democratic National Committee, argues that doing the right thing once does not make them heroes. “Just because you’re anti-Trump doesn’t mean you’re still not part of the anti-democratic effort that’s being spearheaded by the Republican party in America.”Bardella, a former senior advisor to Republicans on the House oversight committee, added: “For Republicans like Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney, it says everything that they’re still willing to be called Republicans, and it is the Republican party’s position to make it harder for minorities in America to vote. You look at the closing of voting locations in states like Georgia, where locations that have the highest density of minority voters are now having less options to go vote.“That’s pretty straightforward. That’s pretty racist. It demonstrates the white privilege in play for people like Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney to not see that. The reality is, if they’re not willing to move forward and assist in the effort to enact voter protections in America, then they’re Donald Trump’s biggest ally.”TopicsRepublicansUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

Tens of thousands ‘march for life’ in Washington as fate of Roe v Wade loomsCourt’s conservative supermajority appears open to reversing Roe, overturning nearly 50 years of precedent since 1973 decision In 1974, on the first anniversary of the Roe v Wade supreme court decision, abortion opponents gathered on the National Mall in Washington to “march for life”. They vowed to return each year until the ruling, which established the right to abortion, was no longer the law of the land.Supreme court declines to speed challenge to Texas abortion limitsRead moreOn Friday, anti-abortion activists from across the country braved sub-zero temperatures and the coronavirus pandemic to assemble in Washington, more hopeful than ever that this would be their last march to a court where the fate of Roe will soon be decided.“We are hoping and praying that this year, 2022, will bring a historic change for life,” Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, told a crowd tens of thousands strong and waving signs that read “I am the post-Roe generation” and “The future is anti-abortion”.Praising followers for standing against what she called the “single-most critical rights abuse of our time”, Mancini said they sent a clear message to the supreme court: “Roe is not settled law.”Chris Smith, a Republican congressman from New Jersey, described the mood as one of “fresh hope and heightened expectations”. The court’s conservative supermajority appears open to reversing Roe, thereby overturning nearly 50 years of precedent since the 1973 decision.“There’s optimism in the air, there is a sense that a significant hurdle to protect the unborn is about to move,” he said.The rally took place a day before the 49th anniversary of the Roe decision. The theme of the march, also in its 49th year, was “equality begins in the womb.” Speakers told rally-goers that their cause was bound up with the struggles for racial justice and gender equality and described abortion as “the ultimate form of discrimination”.The march typically draws about 100,000 abortion opponents by the busload to Washington. But this year’s march took place amid a wave of Omicron infections in the nation’s capital that limited turnout.Some activists said on social media they would not attend because of a new mandate in Washington requiring anyone over the age of 12 to show vaccination proof before entering restaurants, conference centers and other public places.Still, the event attracted a large and enthusiastic crowd, priests, pastors and busloads of high school students, among them. Together after the rally they marched to the supreme court singing hymns and chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, Roe v Wade has got to go!”The jubilant demonstration comes as the supreme court reviews a case involving a Mississippi law which bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, a direct challenge to Roe. At oral arguments, several members of the court’s conservative bloc appeared open to not only upholding the ban, but to overruling Roe entirely. A decision is expected by the end of June, months before the midterm elections.“We’ve been building to this moment,” said Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation of Virginia who spoke on a virtual panel organized by the March. Her group was active in helping confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court, part of a decades-long legal strategy by abortion opponents to remake the nation’s federal court system.“We heard justices say that precedent shouldn’t be upheld if it was incorrectly decided in the first place,” Cobb said. “That’s a big deal.”Several Republican lawmakers appeared on stage and virtually to voice their unwavering support for the anti-abortion cause, declaring that the movement was “winning this battle”.Last year, states enacted more than 100 new abortion restrictions, a record, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports reproductive rights and tracks state-level legislation. The group has called 2021 “the worst year for abortion rights in almost half a century”, and estimates that 26 US states are “certain or likely” to immediately ban abortion if Roe is overturned.And conservative states are already laying the groundwork for new restrictions as fights over issues like telemedicine and abortion pills gain momentum.Though the anti-abortion movement has made significant legal and policy gains in recent decades, public opinion polls have consistently found that a majority of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or some circumstances.“If Roe falls, the battle lines will change,” Mancini said. “But make no mistake, the fight for life will need to continue in the states.”Kelly and Greg King, a married couple from Los Angeles, who were attending the event for a third time, said the supreme court decision would likely push their state to expand abortion access. They worry about plans to make California a “sanctuary” for out-of-state patients seeking reproductive care in a post-Roe legal landscape.Clear-eyed about the state’s progressive politics, Kelly King said she would focus her efforts on “changing hearts” rather than changing policy.“Abortion has become … ” Kelly King said, searching for the word. “Normalized,” her husband chimed in. “Yes, normalized,” she said. “That’s the problem.”Hours before marchers arrived on the National Mall, the supreme court declined to accelerate a legal challenge to a Texas law that has effectively banned abortions in the second-largest state.Yet among the speakers, there were few references to that victory or to the Texas law, which is deeply unpopular, including among Republicans.Pro-choice supporters also marked the anniversary, using the occasion to “sound the alarm” on the threat posed to reproductive rights.Mini Timmaraju, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, warned that a “small but vocal minority” was “determined to undermine the will of the majority of people in this country who support reproductive freedom”.“They falsely claim to be supporters of ‘equality’ all while working ardently to block abortion access and end the legal right to abortion,” she said in a statement. “Make no mistake – this movement’s end goals would only criminalize and endanger people based on pregnancy outcomes, furthering inequality.”At the White House, press secretary Jen Psaki noted the anniversary of Roe v Wade during her press briefing, saying that “reproductive healthcare has been under extreme and relentless assault ever since, especially in recent months”.She said the Biden administration was committed to working with Congress to pass federal legislation essentially enshrining into law a woman’s right to an abortion. The Democratic-controlled House passed the bill last year, but it remains stalled in the Senate, where it faces a Republican filibuster.“We’re deeply committed to making sure everyone has access to care and we will defend it with every tool we have,” Psaki said.At the rally, the presence of Make America Great Again hats was a reminder of the mutually beneficial relationship forged between Christian conservatives and Donald Trump, who became the first sitting president to attend the event in 2020.As they gathered, Trump voiced his allegiance: “As you gather together today for the March for Life, I am with you in spirit!”While many of the speakers anticipated the end of Roe, several demonstrators said they would continue to attend future marches until its mission “to make abortion unthinkable” was achieved.“I just pray every year that this is the last year we’re here,” said Janice LePage, who works for the youth ministry in the Archdiocese of St Louis. “I’m praying that the following year will be a march of celebration.”TopicsAbortionWashington DCUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Texts show Fox News host Hannity’s pleas to Trump aide after Capitol attackMessages said there should be ‘no more stolen election talk’ and ‘no more crazy people’ should be admitted to president’s orbit

US politics – live coverage
In the aftermath of the deadly attack on the US Capitol last year, the rightwing Fox News host Sean Hannity pleaded with a top aide to Donald Trump that there should be “no more stolen election talk” and “no more crazy people” should be admitted to the president’s orbit.Michael Flynn allies allegedly plotted to lean on Republicans to back vote auditsRead moreKayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, agreed – but to little effect.More than a year after the riot, around which seven people died as Trump supporters sought to stop certification of electoral college results, Trump continues to lie that the 2020 election was stolen by Joe Biden.He also continues to keep company with far-right conspiracy theorists including Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder who in a lawsuit this week was accused of being “crazy like a fox”.Hannity has also long been close to Trump, as an informal adviser and sometime rally guest. Though he has been revealed to have been shaken by the attack on the Capitol, he has spent the year since the riot supporting Trump’s version of events.The House committee investigating January 6 has asked for Hannity’s cooperation, a request a lawyer for the host said raises “first amendment concerns regarding freedom of the press”.Hannity has previously said he does not claim to be a journalist.Excerpts of his messages to McEnany on 7 January 2021 were included in a letter from the January 6 committee to Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter and adviser whom the panel also wishes to question.“First,” the letter said, “on 7 January, Mr Hannity texted Ms McEnany, laying out a five-point approach for conversations with President Trump. Items one and two of that plan read as follows:“1 – No more stolen election talk.“2 – Yes, impeachment and 25th amendment are real, and many people will quit… ”McEnany, the letter said, responded: “Love that. Thank you. That is the playbook. I will help reinforce… ”If McEnany did follow Hannity’s playbook, it did not produce a touchdown or even a reasonable punt.It has been widely reported that invoking the 25th amendment, which provides for the removal of a president deemed incapable of carrying out his or her duties, was seriously discussed among cabinet and White House officials.That came to nothing but Trump was impeached a second time. He was acquitted when enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal.On Friday, Politico published the text of a draft executive order for the seizure of voting machines and the text of a speech in which Trump would have condemned the Capitol rioters – but which he never gave.According to the January 6 committee, Hannity also told McEnany: “Key now. No more crazy people.”McEnany said: “Yes. 100%.”A footnote to the letter says Katrina Pierson, another rightwing commentator, “also uses the term ‘crazies’ in her text messages, apparently to describe a number of the president’s supporters”.Lindell continues to insist he has evidence the 2020 election was stolen, recently claiming his work could lead to the imprisonment for life of “300 and some million people”.That prompted the Washington Post to ask: “Are you one of the one in 11 Americans Mike Lindell doesn’t want to arrest?”In remarks at a Trump rally in Arizona last weekend, Lindell took aim at Hannity’s employer.MyPillow CEO faces defamation lawsuit from second voting machine makerRead more“When was the last time you saw anyone on Fox talk about the 2020 election?” he asked.Fox News has continued to stoke conspiracy theories about the Capitol riot but Fox Corporation faces lawsuits regarding claims of a stolen election.This week, Lindell joined Fox in being sued by Smartmatic, a maker of election machines.In the suit, the company accused Lindell of knowing what he was doing – namely, trying to sell pillows – when spreading election lies.He was, the company said, “crazy like a fox”.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsFox NewsUS television industryRepublicansTrump administrationDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

Draft Trump order told defense chief to seize swing-state voting machinesUnpublished executive order, obtained by Politico, among documents provided to January 6 panel after court ruling

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In the heady days between Donald Trump’s defeat in November 2020 and the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol, an executive order was prepared. It commanded the defense secretary to seize voting machines in battleground states, as part of Trump’s “big lie” that the vote was rigged.Michael Flynn allies allegedly plotted to lean on Republicans to back vote auditsRead moreThe draft executive order, obtained and published by Politico, was never sent and its author is unknown. It was part of a cache of documents handed over to the House committee investigating the 6 January violence, after the supreme court ruled this week that Trump could not shield himself from oversight on grounds of executive privilege.The disclosure of the draft order adds to evidence of the lengths to which Trump and his close advisers were prepared to go to keep him in the White House, against the will of the American people. Under the draft order, the defense secretary would have been required to carry out an assessment of the voting machines “no later than 60 days from commencement of operations”.That would have pushed the chaos that Trump assiduously attempted to sow around Joe Biden’s legitimate victory well beyond the handover of power at the inauguration on 20 January.The publication of the document will provoke intense speculation as to who wrote it. Politico pointed out that at the time the draft order was dated, 16 December 2020, the idea of seizing voting machines in key states was being vigorously promoted by Sidney Powell, a controversial lawyer who had Trump’s ear at the time.The document outlines the seizure of voting machines by the Pentagon under federal emergency powers. That would in itself have been incendiary, as it would have amounted to a dramatic display of federal over state power of the sort normally fiercely resisted by Republicans.The author of the draft order seeks to justify such a contentious move by regurgitating conspiracy theories. For example, pointing to voting machines, the document says there is “evidence of international and foreign interference in the November 3, 2020, election”.It names Dominion Voting Systems, a leading provider of voting machines that has become the target of rightwing conspiracy theorists and big lie merchants. Dominion has sued several purveyors of false claims that its products were used to swing the election from Trump to Biden.“Dominion Voting Systems and related companies are owned or heavily controlled and influenced by foreign agents, countries, and interests,” the draft order falsely claims.The draft also singles out Antrim county, Michigan. Claims that voting machines in that county were compromised have been thoroughly rebutted, including by state election authorities.A second document was also leaked to Politico from the new mountain of paperwork received by the 6 January committee. Titled Remarks on National Healing, it appears to be the text of a speech Trump never delivered.The tone of the speech is striking because it stands in stark contrast to the approach Trump actually adopted in the wake of the Capitol violence. Still president for two weeks, he attempted to belittle the significance of the day.Had this alternative speech been given, Trump would have sent out a very different message. It describes 6 January as a “heinous attack” that left him “outraged and sickened by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem”.The text added: “The Demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy.”TopicsUS elections 2020Donald TrumpUS politicsUS voting rightsTrump administrationnewsReuse this content More

Biden’s administration is in shambles. It’s not entirely his faultOsita NwanevuWhile Biden has made mistakes, his biggest obstacles – such as electoral biases built into the US system – are not his doing A year into his term, the Biden administration is in shambles. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema’s support for the legislative filibuster has killed the Democratic voting rights effort. Biden’s Build Back Better plan, a massive reconciliation package containing initiatives on issues from the climate crisis to childcare is, for now, dead in the water; Manchin and Sinema will determine whether any of its provisions survive in attenuated form.Immigration reform and healthcare reform, both central to Democratic intra-party debates during the 2020 primaries, have fallen entirely off the radar. The US supreme court may overturn Roe v Wade in the coming months. The latest wave of the coronavirus pandemic is still ravaging the country thanks not only to Covid denialists and vaccine skeptics on the right, but an administration that has struggled to keep its promises on easy access to tests. Abroad, Biden’s courageous withdrawal from Afghanistan ⁠– a kept promise even the president’s harshest critics on the left were willing to give him credit for ⁠– has been marred by economic sanctions that have left 23 million Afghans without enough to eat, and the media is already itching to blame Biden for a Russian invasion of Ukraine.None of this is to say that Biden’s first year in office has been bereft of real accomplishments or positive press. But neither the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act nor the American Rescue Plan ⁠– the president’s two great legislative victories thus far ⁠– have resonated with the electorate. Biden now holds the second lowest approval rating of any president at this point in their term ⁠– the record is still held by his predecessor, Donald Trump.It’s clear across the polls that voters are faulting Biden for inflation and a supposed inattention to the economy. But elevated inflation has been a global phenomenon ⁠– and here, one of the proximate causes has been the strength of an economic recovery boosted by the American Rescue Plan. Really, Biden has been focused on the economy to the exclusion of nearly everything else on the Democratic agenda ⁠– his recent pivot to voting rights came only after the collapse of negotiations on the Build Back Better plan which, in its initial form, was easily among the most ambitious economic packages ever proposed in Washington.Messaging on the plan plainly hasn’t worked. The main individual components of Build Back Better are far more popular than the overall package ⁠– late last year, Politico and Morning Consult found that 47% of registered voters supported the bill, while increasing funding for affordable housing and expanding Medicaid to cover hearing services registered 65% and 75% support respectively. That’s not terribly surprising given that voters have probably heard much more about the intractability of negotiations over the plan in Congress than they have about the plan’s substance.While Manchin and Sinema bear most of the blame for this, some commentators have also taken Biden himself to task for overpromising on his legislative agenda and deviating from the centrism he’d been known for. “The president should remember that he won as a moderate and a unifier,” the New York Times’ Bret Stephens warned on Tuesday. “Biden would do better to move on from defeat and draft legislation with bipartisan appeal.” But as these critics know full well, there’s extremely little that both parties still agree on, and even modest bipartisan proposals like universal gun background checks have been doomed to failure by the legislative filibuster, which forces the 50-member Democratic caucus to win over not just some, but at least 10 Republicans to pass anything besides budget reconciliation.Biden’s supporters and his centrist critics both have an interest in framing him as a visionary. But he isn’t one – the enlarged agenda the centrists disdain has been the fruit of internal party pressure and the sheer scale of our public health and economic crises. There’s plenty of evidence that Biden still favors moderation and restraint, especially in the administration’s executive actions and, on certain issues, executive inaction ⁠– there, the White House has spent the year frustrating party activists on issues including student debt, immigration and policing.It is true, though, that Biden has made a slew of extravagant and under-scrutinized promises. Like his campaign, Biden’s inaugural address last year focused less on making the case for a set of specific policies than on making the case for Joe Biden as our spiritual savior. “Today, on this January day,” he told the crowd, “my whole soul is in this: bringing America together, uniting our people, and uniting our nation.”Here, Biden’s failure should be obvious even to Americans who don’t follow the news closely. The tenor of political debate hasn’t softened; our substantive political divides remain just as deep. The notion that American unity was within Biden’s capacity to achieve was simply a lie ⁠– one of many he has told about the state of our country and where it’s going. During the campaign, he assured voters that the Republican party would reach an epiphany and develop a willingness to work broadly with Democrats once Trump left the White House. In what amounted to open mockery of that claim, Mitt Romney ⁠– widely lauded in the press and within the Democratic party as one of the Republican party’s last voices of reason ⁠– compared Biden’s election reform advocacy to Trump’s post-election shenanigans earlier this month. “President Biden goes down the same tragic road taken by President Trump,” he said in a US Senate floor speech, “casting doubt on the reliability of American elections.”In his press conference on Wednesday, Biden insisted he hadn’t a clue that he’d face this kind of nonsense and opposition from the right. Believing him does no credit to his intelligence. This was another lie, one uttered to advance the strategy Democrats generally turn to when they’re down ⁠– projecting indignation over Republican obstruction while hoping, in this case, that voters don’t notice the Democratic party controls government and can pass whatever it likes provided the party is unified.Biden’s current standing gives us reason to doubt this will work in the November midterms. So does electoral history ⁠– incumbent parties tend to do poorly in them. None of that routine flux, the product of what political scientists call “thermostatic public opinion”, has produced the meaningful change many frustrated Americans hope to bring about at the polls. Inequality and corporate power are growing. Decades of rhetoric and poor policies have failed to bring about much progress on issues from healthcare to education. And both immediate crises like the coronavirus pandemic and long-term challenges like the climate crisis seem beyond our capacity to address.That impotence has been the product of our institutions and the myths that sustain faith in them. Biden has taken a belated and tentative interest in reworking the Senate’s rules; opposition from Manchin and Sinema and the electoral biases of our system have not only hobbled his agenda, but also ensured that Democrats won’t be able to govern on their own again in Washington for many years to come should they lose their governing majority in November.It’s not obvious that there’s anything Biden can do to save the party from that fate. But it’s clear what moral leadership demands from him now. Our federal order is strangling us. He should say so. He should admit too that conflict and dissensus will always define American society. No other future is available for a country as large, diverse and nominally free as ours. And the achievements we take the most pride in today ⁠– from women’s suffrage to the civil rights movement ⁠– simply would not have been possible if leaders had limited their aspirations to objectives that “brought Americans together”. Naturally, there’s not a chance in hell anything like this will ever pass from Biden’s lips. It’s not savvy and it’s not safe. But it is the truth, and the American people deserve to hear it from someone some day.
Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist
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If the Democrats don’t shape up, Biden’s presidency will lead to a Trumpian sequelAstra TaylorThe president has failed to capitalise on progressive sentiment: his party needs to stand up for the working class How should one feel about the first year of the Biden presidency?I can’t really say I’m disappointed, since I didn’t have high hopes going into it. But I do feel dread. This last year has felt a bit like being trapped in a nail-biting intermission between two horror films. The opening instalment consisted of Donald Trump’s first four years in office – it ended with the cliffhanger of a deadly plague and a surreal, poorly executed, but still terrifying ransacking of the Capitol. The sequel practically writes itself, as the man ascends to power a second time, even more emboldened and determined to hold on to power.Winter of peril and impossibility: Biden faces hard truth at anniversary press conferenceRead moreOf course, the script is not yet set in stone. If regular people in the US get organised, we can help push the political class toward a different ending. But to do this effectively, we need to tell a story that begins earlier. To continue with the bad movie metaphors, the prequels are what got us into this mess.For decades, senior Democrats tacked rightward, helping to create the social conditions that Trump and his cronies took advantage of to propel themselves to the White House. Instead of rolling back Reaganism and standing up to a swiftly radicalising conservative base, the party elite helped implement and further entrench an undemocratic, corporate agenda. Democratic functionaries slashed welfare, invested in the military and policing, deregulated the financial sector, increased fossil fuel production and lobbied for disastrous international trade deals.The people who did this are Biden’s natural milieu – and they want Americans to believe their problems began in 2016. Establishment Democrats are desperate to paint Donald Trump and the Covid-19 pandemic as aberrations to an otherwise agreeable status quo. Thus a speedy “return to normal” is all it will take to cure what ails us.The problem, however, is that “normal” was a crisis.The political scientist Corey Robin recently pointed out a core paradox of the Biden administration. On the one hand, Biden has some important accomplishments under his belt: two enormous spending bills and crucial federal appointments, including dozens of judges. But, as Robin notes, they are tainted by an awareness of their fundamental inadequacy. These perilous times require more than generous spending bills and staffing tweaks – Americans need to restructure the economy, stabilise the environment and democratise the political system, before it’s too late.Though never the progressive candidate, Biden briefly appeared to be willing to break with tradition and embrace a bolder approach. “When President Biden took office, he promised to make ending poverty a theory of change,” Shailly Barnes, policy director at the anti-poverty group, Poor People’s Campaign, told me. “While we saw glimmers of what that might have been, we have yet to see this implemented in practice. The 140 million people who are poor or one emergency away from economic ruin … need more than short-term or temporary assistance programmes.”Consider one area I know well: the fight for student debt cancellation. Short-term assistance is all these borrowers have received, despite Biden’s promise of mass relief. Student debt cancellation is an interesting litmus test for the administration. While other proposals he campaigned on – such as raising the minimum wage and securing voting rights – require legislation to pass, the president has the power to cancel all federal student loans with a single signature. But instead of picking up the pen, the president has balked and backtracked, misleadingly focusing on the few Ivy League graduates who would benefit from write-offs. At the end of last year, his administration publicly declared that turning student loan payments back on was a high priority for the administration. Why? A concern about optics: his advisers worry that further relief programmes would undercut messaging about the economy’s good health. Given this intransigence, activists like myself have had to fight the White House tooth and nail just to get it to extend the student loan payment pause to 1 May.Here, the folly of Biden’s first year is on full display. Student debt cancellation would be a win for the American people and the administration. The more loans are cancelled, the more the economy is boosted and the more the racial wealth gap narrows. It is also incredibly popular with young voters, Black voters, and even Republicans. Given that it is a midterm year, delivering on this promise should be a no-brainer. Reform of the criminal punishment system is another area where progress has stalled, despite Biden having come to power after a wave of historic racial justice protests. Members of the dominant, corporate wing of the Democratic party like to marginalise progressives and activists while presenting themselves as savvy and responsible realists. This strategy is both insulting and absurd: there’s nothing naive or irresponsible about wanting a decent and equitable society where people aren’t buried in unpayable debt and don’t have to live in fear of the police.But the strategy is also self-defeating. “They think they are pissing on the left, but what they are really doing is failing to fight visibly [and] vocally for millions of everyday working people,” rural Pennsylvania organiser and author Jonathan Smucker told me. “There is no world in which that is good politics.”The Biden administration has instead been engaged in a dispiriting saga of insider negotiations – negotiations that make an already restive public feel even more frustrated and abandoned.Where the build back better bill is concerned, the president should have instructed his allies in Congress to load it up with extra investment that would mollify opposition and make it harder for his party’s obstructionists, like Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, to hold it hostage. As the organiser Will Lawrence, a co-founder of the youth-led environmental justice-focused Sunrise Movement, put it on Twitter: include a “buyout of coal industry shareholders, and a generous lifetime pension for every miner in West Virginia. Blanket the airwaves promoting it for two weeks in West Virginia. Then put it to a vote and dare Manchin to vote against it.”If you are going to lose because a coal-baron senator is determined to derail your entire agenda and doom millions to deepening poverty and climate chaos, you may as well go down with a real fight. This fight should clarify for the public where the real problem is – not in culture war distractions, but the corruption of our political system by corporate interests – and it would make clear that the Democrats were firmly on their side.President Biden’s first year has ultimately demoralised people, while also providing an opportunity for Republicans to appear poised to seize power. Last spring, a strategic memo by Representative Jim Banks, leader of the largest bloc of House conservatives, was leaked: “URGENT: Cementing GOP as Working-Class party.” It laid out one plot for the second feature of the horror film I keep imagining. Of course, reactionaries will never actually defend working people. But they’re busy crafting a deceptive and destructive script. And if the current administration doesn’t act, we’ll all be watching it soon.
Astra Taylor is a writer, organiser and documentary maker
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Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell has been criticised after saying that Black Americans vote ‘in just as high a percentage as Americans’. The comment came after Senate Democrats failed to pass voting rights protections in the run-up to this November’s midterm elections that will determine control of Congress in 2023. 
A reporter asked McConnell if he had a message for voters of color who were concerned that, without the John R Lewis Voting Rights Act, they were not going to be able to vote in the midterm. ‘Well, the concern is misplaced because, if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans,’ McConnell said

Mitch McConnell’s viral Black voter comments cause widespread furor More