US Politics

RepublicansRepublicans who voted for Biden’s infrastructure bill threatened with retaliationRightwingers in the party call for members who helped pass the bill to be stripped of their committee assignments Gloria Oladipo in New York@gaoladipoWed 10 Nov 2021 13.37 ESTLast modified on Wed 10 Nov 2021 14.03 ESTA group of congressional Republicans who helped pass the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill last Friday are facing calls for political punishment by their own party, including the threat of having their committee assignments stripped for supporting the president’s agenda, according to reports this week.Several hardline Republicans, including the Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert and former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, have publicly urged retaliation against party colleagues who voted for the $1tn bill. Some members who were among the GOP rank and file who helped the bill pass the House say they have received death threats.Many of the Republicans who backed the bipartisan bill have ranking positions on full committees or subcommittees, including the homeland security committee and the natural resources committee.The bill, which passed 228 to 206, would have failed if no Republicans voted for it in the House late last Friday, prompting widespread fury and intra-party threats, Punchbowl news reported.“That 13 House Republicans provided the votes needed to pass this is absurd,” the Texas representative Chip Roy said, and the Washington Post has reported.Florida’s Matt Gaetz had fumed early on Saturday, tweeting: “I can’t believe Republicans just gave the Democrats their socialism bill.”On Tuesday, Meadows said: “They stripped Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committees for not even voting against the Republican party.… These people voted for Joe Biden, for an infrastructure bill that will clear the way for more socialist spending that, quite frankly, gives Joe Biden a win.”Greene, a radical rightist from Georgia, was demoted earlier this year for promulgating conspiracy theories and untrue claims about issues including mass shootings. She has also been fined several times for refusing to wear a mask to help prevent the spread of coronavirus on Capitol Hill.Before the legislative vote, some Republicans threatened to mount primary challenges to any party members who supported the legislation, according to the Washington Post.“Vote for this infrastructure bill and I will primary the hell out of you,” said Representative Madison Hawthorn of North Carolina.Certain GOP divides in Washington have grown in recent weeks , especially in relation to the bipartisan committee investigating the Capitol insurrection of 6 January by extremist supporters of Donald Trump, and legislative battles on Biden’s agenda.On Tuesday evening, congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who is the leading Republican on that committee, gave a speech in New Hampshire, saying that the US was “confronting a domestic threat that we have never faced before” in the form of Donald Trump, who is “attempting to unravel the foundations of our constitutional republic” with his continued attempts to block the investigation of the insurrection and campaign to declare Biden’s 2020 victory fraudulent.Cheney added: “Political leaders who sit silent in the face of these false and dangerous claims are aiding the former president, who is at war with the rule of law, and the constitution.”She emphasized her Republican credentials by pointing out that she disagreed with almost everything Joe Biden has done since coming to power in January.But she added of her own party’s continued support of Trump that “when our constitutional order is threatened, as it is now, rising above partisanship is not simply an aspiration. It is an obligation.”Amid talk that her high-stakes strategy could break her career or set her on a path to run for the White House, observers noted the significance that she delivered her latest broadside in New Hampshire, the small New England state with outsize influence, as it holds the first primary contest in the country during presidential elections.TopicsRepublicansUS CongressInfrastructureUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

OpinionRaceWhite supremacists declare war on democracy and walk away unscathedCarol AndersonThe United States has a terrible habit of letting white supremacy get away with repeated attempts to murder American democracy Wed 10 Nov 2021 06.14 ESTLast modified on Wed 10 Nov 2021 06.16 ESTAmerican democracy’s most dangerous adversary is white supremacy. Throughout this nation’s history, white supremacy has undermined, twisted and attacked the viability of the United States. What makes white supremacy so lethal, however, is not just its presence but also the refusal to hold its adherents fully accountable for the damage they have done and continue to do to the nation. The insurrection on 6 January and the weak response are only the latest example.During the war for independence, after the British captured Savannah, the king’s forces set out to capture a wholly unprepared South Carolina. John Laurens, an aide-de-camp of George Washington, pleaded with the South Carolina government to arm the enslaved because the state didn’t have enough available white men to fight the 8,000-strong British force barreling toward Charleston. This was a crisis born of South Carolina’s decision to divert most of the state’s white men from the Continental Army to fight the Redcoats and, instead, enlist them in the militia to control the enslaved population, whom they defined as the primary threat.The response to Laurens’ plan was, therefore, “horror” and “alarm”. Umbrage even. The state’s political leaders were so appalled that they questioned whether “this union was worth fighting for at all”. The United States of America was not nearly as important as maintaining slavery. They, therefore, toyed with the idea of surrendering to the British, making a separate peace. For that flat-out refusal to fight with every resource at its command, and clear willingness to sacrifice the United States simply to maintain slavery, South Carolina suffered no consequences. It wasn’t ostracized. It wasn’t penalized. Instead, the state’s leaders were fully embraced as Founding Fathers and welcomed into the new nation’s halls of power.Several years later, at the 1787 constitutional convention, the south once again put white supremacy above the viability of the United States. In tough negotiations, South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia’s representatives were willing to hold the nation hostage and risk its destruction unless protection of slavery and the empowering of enslavers was embedded in the constitution. The negotiators acknowledged exactly what was going on and even, sometimes, how reprehensible it was. When, for example, the delegates bowed down to the south’s demands for 20 additional years of the Atlantic slave trade, James Madison admitted that without that concession, “the southern states would not have entered into the union of America”. And, therefore, as “great as the evil is” he added “the dismemberment of the Union would be worse”.The same refrain played after the infamous three-fifths clause passed under the southern threat to walk away and, thus, scuttle the constitution and the United States. Massachusetts delegate Rufus King called the nefarious formula to determine representation in Congress one of the constitution’s “greatest blemishes” while lamenting that it “was a necessary sacrifice to the establishment of the Constitution”.The enslavers’ extortionist threats – white supremacy as the price for the nation to come into being – should have created a massive backlash. But it didn’t. There was no retribution, only compliance and acquiescence. The demonstrated lack of accountability for threatening the viability of the United States served only to embolden the slaveholders, who bullied, harangued and pummeled other congressional leaders, including the brutal 1856 beating of Senator Charles Sumner by southerner Preston Brooks on the Senate floor, to get their way.When the bullying and beatings no longer worked, and the nation dared elect a president opposed to slavery spreading any further, the slaveholders launched a military attack against the United States. They wanted, according to Alexander H Stephens, vice-president of the Confederate States of America, the “disintegration” of the Union. He said that the United States had to be destroyed because, unlike the US, the Confederacy’s “cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition”.To wage its war for white supremacy, the Confederates killed and wounded more than 646,000 American soldiers. In addition to the loss of life, fending off the CSA’s devastating military assault cost the United States billions of dollars. The CSA also tried to badger and entice the British and French to ally with the Confederacy and attack the United States.For doing so much to destroy this nation, after the CSA’s defeat, the consequences were disproportionately minimal. President Andrew Johnson granted many of the Confederacy’s leaders amnesty and allowed them to resume positions of power in the government. The entrée into American society for the traitors was also paved by the way the US supreme court dismantled many of the protections put in place by Congress for post-civil war Black citizenship – the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, as well as laws banning racial segregation and white domestic terrorism – and allowed the bureaucratic and lynching violence of Jim Crow to eviscerate the “self-evident” principles of equality. And to ensure that a narrative of white supremacy’s innocence permeated the nation’s textbooks, the Confederacy’s treachery became the “war of Northern aggression” and the south’s “Lost Cause” became nothing less than noble. The forgiveness tour continued as the states, not just in the south, allowed the erection of statues in the public square honoring those who committed treason.The 6 January invasion of the US Capitol, provoked by the lie that cities with sizable minority populations, such as Atlanta, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, “stole” the 2020 election is, at its core, white supremacists’ anger that African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans and Native Americans not only voted but did so decisively against Donald Trump. The invaders constructed gallows, stormed the US Capitol, wanted to hang Vice-President Mike Pence, who would not hand the election to Trump, and hunted for the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. They beat police officers, yelled “nigger” at others, carried the Confederate flag through the halls of the building and decided that those defending the Capitol were the actual “traitors” who needed to be killed.This horrific attack on American democracy should have resulted in a full-throttled response. But, once again, white supremacy is able to walk away virtually unscathed. US senators and representatives who were at the rally inciting the invaders were not expelled from Congress. Similarly, in shades of the post- civil war Confederacy, several politicians who attended the incendiary event at the Ellipse were recently re-elected to office. And those who stormed the Capitol are getting charged with misdemeanors, being allowed to go on vacations out of the country, and, despite the attempt to stage a coup and overturn the results of a presidential election, getting feather-light sentences.It also took months to establish a congressional committee to investigate 6 January, but it’s already clear that its subpoenas, as Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Clark so brazenly demonstrated, can be violated and mocked at will with no consequences. And, like the Lost Cause, its adherents have tried to rewrite this assault on America as “a normal tourist visit” or simply “law-abiding, patriotic, mom and pop, young adults pushing baby carriages”.In other words, this nation has a really bad habit of letting white supremacy get away with repeated attempts to murder American democracy. It’s time to break that habit. If we don’t, they just might succeed next time.
Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler professor of African American studies at Emory University and the author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide and One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy. She is a contributor to the Guardian
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OpinionCop26Barack Obama has a nerve preaching about the climate crisisKate AronoffThe former US president directed his Cop26 speech at young people, but he made the task of keeping warming to 1.5C far harder Wed 10 Nov 2021 05.00 ESTLast modified on Wed 10 Nov 2021 12.06 ESTHundreds of people thronged the corridors at Cop26 on Monday, trying to make it into an event in one of the Scottish Event Campus’s drab plenary rooms. Passing by, I asked a man in the crowd what all the commotion was for. He responded with one word: “Obama.” The former president still maintains his rock star-ish appeal. His speech proved the biggest draw of the conference so far. But what should we make of it in the cold light of day?Much of his message was directed at young people, whom he praised as both “sophisticated consumers” and the source of the “most important energy in this movement”. He was clear: it’s up to all of us – but especially young people – to come together and keep the planet from warming beyond 1.5C. “Collectively and individually we are still falling short” he said, in the kind of grand, sweeping tones that built his career. “We have not done nearly enough to address this crisis. We are going to have to do more. Whether that happens or not to a large degree is going to depend on you.”Obama implores world leaders to ‘step up now’ to avert climate disasterRead moreWho precisely is “we” in this scenario? The young people who were children when Obama took office did not clear the way for a 750% explosion in crude oil exports, as he did just a few days after the Paris agreement was brokered in 2015. Nor did they boast proudly about it years later, as ever-more research mounted about the dangers of continuing to invest in fossil fuels. Speaking at a Houston, Texas gala in 2018, the former president proudly took credit for booming US fossil fuel production. “Suddenly America is the largest oil producer. That was me people,” he boasted jokingly to an industry-friendly crowd. “Say thank you.”The UN-backed 2021 Production Gap Report found that world governments are now on track to produce double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than is compatible with keeping warming below 1.5C. Obama’s approach to boosting gas and renewables simultaneously, which he dubbed the “All of the above” doctrine, still appears to be a guiding principle of the Biden administration.Young people also didn’t use the US Export-Import Bank to direct $34bn to 70 fossil fuel projects around the world. Neither did they deploy the National Security Administration to surveil other countries’ delegations at the climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009. And they have not joined other wealthy nations at the UN Framework Conventions on Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks to keep conversations about the enormous climate debt they owe the rest of the world off the table.Obama’s rhetoric mirrored the approach of the United States at countless climate talks. Where it tends to collapse the vast differences between and within countries, to avoid all but the most symbolic discussions of “common but differentiated responsibility”, as it says in the UNFCCC.The global north is responsible for 92% of excess carbon dioxide emissions since the dawn of the industrial age. The United States alone is responsible for 40% of those – a fact its negotiators in Republican and Democratic administrations alike have long sought to obscure. “If equity’s in,” said top Obama-era climate negotiator Todd Stern at climate talks in Durban, South Africa in 2011, “we’re out.Cop26 leaders blame individuals, while supporting a far more destructive system | Stephen ReicherRead moreObama speech day was also, less glamorously, loss and damage day. Climate-vulnerable countries continue to demand real financial commitments to support them rebuilding from the damages that rising temperatures are already causing. His administration is one major reason why that’s been so difficult. “There’s one thing that we don’t accept and won’t accept in this agreement,” Stern said while negotiating the Paris agreement in 2015, “and that is the notion that there should be liability and compensation for loss and damage. That’s a line that we can’t cross.”Obama wants to continue to make lofty speeches, which are ultimately campaigning for a return to his version of business as usual – better than Trump but utterly ill-equipped to take on the climate crisis. And he can’t help but take a swings at the left. “Don’t think you can ignore politics … You can’t be too pure for it,” he scolded. “It’s part of the process that is going to deliver all of us.”Plenty of young people did get involved in electoral politics, of course. They knocked on doors and made phone calls for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. He enjoyed the support of 60% of voters under 30, partly for his commitment to a $16.3tn green new deal climate programme.To hear Obama tell it, if enough people come together to raise awareness about the climate crisis and consume smartly, they will change enough hearts and minds to keep warming below 1.5C. That would be a lot easier if Obama, in his time as leader of the free world, hadn’t made the task so much harder for all those inspiring, passionate young people. TopicsCop26OpinionBarack ObamaGreenhouse gas emissionsUS politicsClimate crisiscommentReuse this content More

US Capitol attackTrump White House records can be given to Capitol attack panel, judge rules Trump lawyers vow to appeal move, which would allow transmission of documents as soon as this week Hugo Lowell in WashingtonTue 9 Nov 2021 22.57 ESTLast modified on Tue 9 Nov 2021 22.59 ESTA federal judge in Washington has ruled that hundreds of pages of White House records from the Trump administration can be turned over to the House committee investigating the deadly 6 January attack on the Capitol, defying objections from Donald Trump.The decision, handed down late on Tuesday by the US district judge Tanya Chutkan, clears the way for the National Archives to start transmitting the records requested by Congress as early as Friday, though attorneys for Trump immediately vowed to appeal the ruling.“The court holds that the public interest lies in permitting – not enjoining – the combined will of the legislative and executive branches to study the events that led to January 6,” Chutkan wrote in a 39-page opinion that delivered a major win to the select committee.The White House records in question are among the most sensitive: visitor logs, telephone records, and other documents from the files of Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows as well as the former deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin.US Capitol attack committee issues subpoenas to 10 senior Trump officialsRead moreIn total, the National Archives has indicated Trump was invoking executive privilege protections to block the release of at least 750 pages of records that pertained to the select committee’s request in August for records about Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election.The Biden administration has already waived executive privilege for all of the documents in the first tranche of records requested by the select committee, but Trump sued the panel and the National Archives last month in an attempt to halt their release.House investigators have been pursuing the records for weeks as they undertake a far-reaching inquiry into the extent of the former president’s involvement in the Capitol attack and whether he had advance knowledge of the insurrection that left five dead and 140 injured.The ruling from the US district court in Washington DC came after the select committee issued 10 new subpoenas to Trump administration officials, including Trump’s former senior adviser Stephen Miller and press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.The subpoenas, which demand documents and testimony, are focused squarely on activities involving the White House and come a day after the select committee subpoenaed other top Trump associates who aimed to undercut the results of the 2020 election.The select committee gave the 10 Trump officials until 23 November to comply with the document requests in the subpoena, with deposition dates scheduled through December. It was not immediately clear on Tuesday whether any of the officials would cooperate.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

WildlifeVictory for spotted owl as Trump-era plan to reduce habitat is struck down Biden administration move halts plan to allow logging in forests where imperiled bird lives Gabrielle Canon and agencies@GabrielleCanonTue 9 Nov 2021 22.18 ESTFirst published on Tue 9 Nov 2021 18.19 ESTIn a victory for the northern spotted owl, the Biden administration has struck down a Trump-era plan that would have removed more than 3.4m acres of critical habitat for the imperiled bird and opened the old-growth forests where it lives to logging.The population of the small chocolate-brown owl, which lives in forested areas in Washington, Oregon, and northern California, has been in decline for decades and has already lost roughly 70% of its habitat. Its numbers have plummeted 77% in Washington state, 68% in Oregon, and close to half in California, according to studies by the US Geological Survey, and biologists fear that further habitat reduction would put them on the path to extinction.A controversial decision made by Trump’s interior secretary just five days before leaving office was widely viewed as a parting gift to the timber industry. The Fish and Wildlife Service has since found that there was “insufficient rationale and justification” to reduce the threatened owl’s habitat.‘Wondrous and amazing’: female California condors can reproduce without malesRead moreUnder the new plan, roughly 204,000 acres – approximately 2% of the 9.6m acres designated as habitat for the owls in 2012 – will be made available for development while more than 3m will be restored and protected. The agency claims the exclusion of those lands from habitat designation will enable federal land managers to meet obligations to the logging industry and help limit catastrophic wildfires that continue to threaten forests in the west.“The exclusions we are proposing now will allow fuels management and sustainable timber harvesting to continue while supporting northern spotted owl recovery,” said Martha Williams, principal deputy director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, in a statement issued when the rule revision was proposed in July.Wildlife advocates, government agencies and the timber industry have sparred for decades over the northern spotted owl. Federal habitat protections imposed in 2012 were meant to avert the bird’s extinction. They’ve also been blamed for a logging slowdown that’s devastated some rural communities.The logging industry has pushed back against the revision, arguing that more thinning and management of protected forests is necessary to prevent wildfires, which devastated 560 square miles (1,450 square kilometers) of spotted owl habitat last fall. Most of that area is no longer considered viable for the birds.In the agency’s analysis of the rule-change, officials note that timber harvesting doesn’t lessen the risk of severe burns, writing that fuel reduction treatments – where smaller, less lucrative vegetation is strategically culled from the landscape – should instead be used to restore forest health. Federal land managers can still conduct these treatments in designated critical habitat, the agency concluded.Timber interests also say some of the land set aside under Tuesday’s announcement isn’t actually spotted owl habitat or is broken up into parcels too small to support the owl. As such, the smaller habitat designation issued under Trump was “legally and scientifically valid”, said Nick Smith, a spokesman for the American Forest Resource Council, a group that represents about 100 manufacturing and logging operations in five western US states.“The federal government cannot set aside critical habitat unless it is habitat for the species. That’s the critical concern,” he said.But the federal biologists found significant issues with the science used to push the previous rule through. David Bernhardt, Trump’s interior secretary, and Aurelia Skipwith, the former Fish and Wildlife service director, dismissed their concerns and underestimated the threat of extinction, according to documents reviewed by the Associated Press.Democratic lawmakers from Oregon, Washington and California in February called for an investigation into the removal of spotted owl protections, citing “potential scientific meddling” by Trump appointees.Bernhardt has defended his handling of the matter, telling AP that Congress gave the interior secretary authority to exclude areas from protection. Environmental advocates championed the move, but continue to have concerns that the agency would allow any amount of logging on the land.“We’re glad the Biden administration repealed the ridiculous and politically driven decision to strip 3m acres from the spotted owl’s critical habitat” said Noah Greenwald, the endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It needs all the habitat it can get if it’s going to make it.” But, he called the exclusions that remain, “disappointing”.“The Biden administration is condoning the cutting of old growth forests on BLM land,” he said. “It is definitely not what the owl needs and it’s not what our climate needs.”Associated Press contributed reportingTopicsWildlifeBiden administrationTrump administrationUS politicsAnimalsnewsReuse this content More

US Capitol attackUS Capitol attack committee issues subpoenas to 10 senior Trump officialsStephen Miller and Kayleigh McEnany among those subpoenaedCommittee expands investigation into events of 6 January Hugo Lowell in WashingtonTue 9 Nov 2021 15.39 ESTLast modified on Tue 9 Nov 2021 15.44 ESTThe House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol moved on Tuesday to issue subpoenas to 10 Trump administration officials, including former senior adviser Stephen Miller and press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, expanding its inquiry into Donald Trump’s involvement in circumstances surrounding the attack.House 6 January panel subpoenas 10 Trump aides including Stephen Miller – liveRead moreThe subpoenas demanding documents and testimony, coming a day after the select committee subpoenaed top Trump lieutenants accused of working to subvert the results of the 2020 election while working from the Willard hotel in Washington, are focused squarely on activities surrounding the White House.House investigators targeted 10 senior Trump White House aides on Tuesday, most notably Miller, McEnany, former vice-president Mike Pence’s national security adviser Keith Kellog and the then White House personnel director, John McEntee.The select committee also subpoenaed the former operations coordinator for the Oval Office, Molly Michael, Trump’s White House deputy chief of staff, Christopher Liddell, senior DoJ counsel Kenneth Klukowski, as well as top aides Cassidy Hutchinson, Ben Williamson and Nicholas Luna.The Mississippi Democratic congressman Bennie Thompson, who chairs the select committee, said in a statement that he authorized the subpoenas to the Trump officials in order to “know precisely what role the former president and his aides played in efforts to stop the counting of the electoral votes”.Thompson added the select committee also wanted the 10 Trump officials to help inform whether anyone outside the White House was involved in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. “We believe the witnesses have relevant information.”Extremist Trump supporters broke into the US Capitol on 6 January ostensibly to try to prevent congress certifying Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the presidential election the previous November.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Alexandria Ocasio-CortezWhite House decries Republican over video depicting violence against AOCPaul Gosar condemned for Twitter video that showed him striking congresswoman with sword and appearing to threaten Joe Biden Martin Pengelly in New York@MartinPengellyTue 9 Nov 2021 15.26 ESTFirst published on Tue 9 Nov 2021 09.20 ESTThe White House on Tuesday condemned the Republican congressman Paul Gosar for tweeting a video which depicted him striking the New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a sword and appearing to threaten Joe Biden.AOC says Marjorie Taylor Greene is ‘deeply unwell’ after 2019 video surfacesRead more“There is no place for any type of violence or that type of language in the political system,” the principal deputy White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, told reporters at a daily briefing. “It should not be happening, and we should be condemning it.”The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said “threats of violence against members of Congress and the president of the United States must not be tolerated” and called on the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, to “join in condemning this horrific video and call on the ethics committee and law enforcement to investigate”.Twitter attached a hateful conduct warning to Gosar’s tweet, which was also posted to Instagram on Sunday, but kept it up online.“This tweet violated the Twitter rules about hateful conduct,” Twitter’s message said. “However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the tweet to remain accessible.”The roughly 90-second video presents an altered version of a Japanese anime series, interspersed with shots of border patrol officers and migrants at the US border with Mexico.In one section, characters whose faces are replaced with those of Gosar and fellow extremist Republicans Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado are seen fighting other characters.Gosar’s character strikes another, made to look like Ocasio-Cortez, in the neck with a sword. The video ends with an apparent threat to Biden.Ocasio-Cortez was in Glasgow on Tuesday, attending the Cop26 climate summit.On Twitter, she wrote: “A creepy member I work with who fundraises for neo-Nazi groups shared a fantasy video of him killing me and he’ll face no consequences because [McCarthy] cheers him on with excuses … well, back to work because institutions don’t protect women of color.”Ocasio-Cortez listed other instances of threatening behavior from Republicans in Congress.“Remember when [Ted] Yoho accosted me on the Capitol [steps] and called me a f[uck]ing b[itch]. Remember when Greene ran after me a few months ago screaming and reaching. Remember when she stalked my office the first time with insurrectionists and people locked inside. All at my job and nothing ever happens. Anyways, back to business.”The congresswoman also called Gosar “just a collection of wet toothpicks anyway”.“White supremacy,” she said, “is for extremely fragile people and sad men like him, whose self concept relies on the myth that he was born superior because deep down he knows he couldn’t open a pickle jar or read a whole book by himself.”Gosar is an ardent Trump ally who in 2018 was the subject of a campaign ad made by six of his siblings, exhorting voters to ditch him.He is also among lawmakers whose phone or computer records are sought by the House committee investigating the deadly attack on Congress on 6 January, in which Trump supporters sought to overturn the former president’s election defeat.On Monday, Eric Swalwell, a House California Democrat, said: “These bloodthirsty losers are more comfortable with violence than voting. Keep exposing them.”The Yale historian Joanne Freeman, author of The Field of Blood, a well-regarded history of violence in Congress before the civil war, wrote: “Threats of violence lead to actual violence. They clear the ground. They cow opposition. They plant the idea. They normalize it. They encourage it. They maim democracy. And run the risk of killing it.”The Associated Press contributed to this reportTopicsAlexandria Ocasio-CortezRepublicansHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More