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Donald TrumpTrump asks judge to force Twitter to reinstate his accountCompany suspended former president’s account in January following the attack on the US Capitol G More

BooksStephanie Grisham: Trump turncoat who may be most damaging yet Former press secretary has decided to ‘break her silence’ but may find media less hospitable than to those who went beforeMartin Pengelly@ More

BooksI’ll Take Your Questions Now review: Stephanie Grisham’s tawdry Trump tell-allThe press secretary who wouldn’t brief the press wants to talk. Like all else to do with Donald and Melania, truth is a casualty Lloyd GreenSun 3 Oct 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 3 Oct 2021 02.02 EDTIn 2015, Donald Trump boasted that his administration would be filled with only “the best and most serious people … top-of-the-line professionals”.Stephanie Grisham: Trump turncoat who may be most damaging yetRead moreMeet Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s third press secretary and sixth communications director, Melania Trump’s first spokeswoman and second chief of staff. All that in less than four years.Before Trump, Grisham reportedly lost one job for padding expense reports and another over plagiarism and was twice cited for driving under the influence. As White House press secretary, she never delivered a formal briefing. Instead, she ladled out interviews to Fox News and OAN.Grisham even went so far as to issue a statement proclaiming that John Kelly, a retired four-star general and past chief of staff, “was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great president”. As Grisham recounts, MSNBC said that statement, which she says was dictated by Trump, had “a decidedly North Korean tone”. It had a point.Finally, on 6 January 2021, Grisham resigned. The insurrectionists who attacked the US Capitol had claimed an unintended scalp. On the page, Grisham lets it be known that the election was not stolen, that she urged the first lady to denounce the storming of the Capitol, and that Melania demurred because she was more concerned with setting up a photo shoot for a rug. That, Grisham writes, was when she decided enough was finally enough.Like most things Trump, reality is a casualty. Text messages obtained by Politico indicate that Grisham was fine with challenging election results – until she wasn’t.Grisham follows into print Michael Cohen, Trump’s ex-lawyer; Omarosa, former Apprentice contestant and Trump White House refugee; Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, former friend and aide to Melania and rival to Grisham; and Stormy Daniels, adult film star and alleged recipient of $130,000 in Trump hush-money.To know Trump is to blab. As Grisham frames things, working near and for the first couple was akin to being in a “Hunger Games-style environment” and Melania morphed into a modern-day Marie Antoinette: “Dismissive. Defeated. Detached.”Grisham’s book is salacious and score-settling – but not entertaining. Yes, Grisham discusses the state of Trump’s “junk” and shares the first couple’s reactions when Daniels immortalized “Mushroom Mario”. Even so, her tone is mirthless.“Not in two million years had I ever thought I’d have a conversation with the president of the United States about his penis,” she writes. Perhaps she forgot Bill Clinton.She also portrays Rudy Giuliani as off-putting and not-quite-right. The New York mayor turned Trump lawyer “gave off weird vibes when he was around the president”, she writes. Being in a meeting with Giuliani was tantamount to “being cross-examined about it later by some committee”. Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, criminally charged Giuliani associates, would surely agree.Grisham has other targets. Mark Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff, is presented as a treacherous boot-licker, instrumental in driving Grisham from her job as White House press secretary and back to the sole employ of Melania. Lindsey Graham was a two-faced leech, “Senator Freeloader” as the author has it. Both Meadows and Graham, she writes, helped undercut Mick Mulvaney as chief of staff.Where are they now? Giuliani is suspended from the bar and reportedly in prosecutors’ crosshairs. Meadows is facing a congressional subpoena over his role on 6 January. Graham is in Trump’s doghouse again.The spotlight on Melania is unsparing. Grisham says the first lady was unofficially called “Rapunzel” by the Secret Service, for her reluctance to leave her personal quarters. Unlike Michelle Obama and Laura Bush, Melania seldom ventured near her East Wing office. Some agents sought to be assigned to Melania, Grisham says, because her “limited movements and travel meant that they could spend more time at home with their families”. But Melania did care deeply about the White House Easter egg roll. We all have our priorities.In Grisham’s telling, Melania was taken aback by racial animus voiced in Charlottesville in August 2017 by white supremacists, and deplored racism herself. Intentionally or otherwise, Grisham omits the fact her former boss was a “birther” who helped her husband stoke the lie that Barack Obama was born in Kenya.Yet Grisham reserves her harshest takes for Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the “interns”, as Grisham says they came to be known. As she saw it, the pair repeatedly conflated being born on third base with wisdom, aesthetic grace with entitlement to whatever they wanted.Grisham describes how the pair attempted to shoehorn themselves into a meeting with the Queen, how Jared offered opinions on the Mexican border and on combating Covid. Grisham appears to relish recounting Kushner’s difficulties in obtaining a security clearance and the fact he needed Trump to get it done.Still, Kushner was de facto chief of staff and no one who crossed him could hope to survive. Sure, Steve Bannon eked out a last-minute pardon, just like Charlie Kushner, Jared’s dad. But Bannon was gone from the White House in months.Wildland review: Evan Osnos on the America Trump exploitedRead moreGrisham has written a tell-all but it is also an exercise in self-pity. She tags an unnamed boyfriend for assorted bad behavior. She suspects there was another woman and regrets her choice of men. The profile matches that of Max Miller, a White House staffer now Trump’s pick for an Ohio congressional seat.Miller reportedly pushed Grisham against a wall and slapped her, allegations he denies. In 2007, he was charged with assault, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and fleeing from the cops. He pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor charges before the case was dismissed.Trump reportedly assaulted his first wife, Ivana, and faces a defamation lawsuit in connection with the alleged sexual assault of the writer E Jean Carroll. He too denies all allegations. So it goes.Grisham laments the state of the Republican party, lauds Liz Cheney and argues that the GOP is “not one man”. Reasonable people can differ. A recent poll shows most Republicans want Trump to continue as their leader.
I’ll Take Your Questions Now is published by Harper Collins
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The ObserverAfghanistanInside the CIA’s secret Kabul base, burned out and abandoned in haste A Taliban commander invited the media to inspect the site where America plotted killing raids and tortured prisonersEmma Graham-Harrison in KabulSun 3 Oct 2021 01.00 EDTThe cars, minibuses and armoured vehicles that the CIA used to run its shadow war in Afghanistan had been lined up and incinerated beyond identification before the Americans left. Below their ashy grey remains, pools of molten metal had solidified into permanent shiny puddles as the blaze cooled.The faux Afghan village where they trained paramilitary forces linked to some of the worst human rights abuses of the war had been brought down on itself. Only a high concrete wall still loomed over the crumpled piles of mud and beams, once used to practise for the widely hated night raids on civilian homes.The vast ammunition dump had been blown up. Many ways to kill and maim human beings, from guns to grenades, mortars to heavy artillery, laid out in three long rows of double-height shipping containers, were reduced to shards of twisted metal. The blast from the huge detonation, which came soon after the bloody bomb at Kabul airport, shook and terrified the capital city.All formed part of the CIA compound that for 20 years was the dark, secret heart of America’s “war on terror”, a place were some of the worst abuses to sour the mission in Afghanistan would fester.The sprawling hillside compound, spread over two square miles north-east of the airport, became infamous early on in the conflict for torture and murder at its “Salt Pit” prison, codenamed Cobalt by the CIA. The men held there called it the “dark prison”, because there was no light in their cells, the only occasional illumination coming from the headlamps of their guards.It was here that Gul Rahman died of hypothermia in 2002 after he was chained to a wall half-naked and left overnight in freezing temperatures. His death prompted the first formal CIA guidelines on interrogation under a new regime of torture, eviscerated in a 2014 report that found that the abuse did not provide useful intelligence.The base has for two decades been a closely guarded secret, visible only in satellite photos, navigated by the testimony of survivors. Now the Taliban’s special forces have moved in and recently, briefly, opened up the secret compound to journalists.“We want to show how they wasted all these things that could have been used to build our country,” said Mullah Hassanain, a commander in the Taliban’s elite 313 unit, who led the tour of destroyed and burnt-out compounds, “burn pits” and incinerated cars, buses and armoured military vehicles.Taliban special forces include suicide attackers who recently marched through Kabul to celebrate seizing the capital. Vehicles now emblazoned with their official “suicide squadron” logo escorted journalists around the former CIA base.It was a grimly ironic juxtaposition of the most cruel and ruthless units on both sides of this war, a reminder of the suffering inflicted on civilians by all combatants in the name of higher goals, over several decades.“They are martyrdom seekers who were responsible for the attacks on important locations of invaders and the regime. They now have control of important locations,” said a Taliban official, when asked why suicide squads were escorting journalists, and if they would continue to operate. “It is a very big battalion. It is responsible for the security of important locations. They will be expanded and further organised. Whenever there is a need, they will respond. They are always ready for sacrifices for our country and the defence of our people.”They planned to use the CIA base for their own military training, Hassanain said, so this brief glimpse of the compound is likely to be both the first and last time the media is allowed in.The men guarding it had already changed into the tiger-stripe camouflage of the old Afghan National Directorate of Security, the spy agency once in charge of hunting them down. The paramilitary units that operated here, based in barracks just near the site of the former Salt Pit jail, included some that were among the most feared in the country, mired in allegations of abuse that included extrajudicial killings of children and other civilians. The barracks had been abandoned so fast that the men who lived there left food half-finished, and barracks floors were littered with possessions spilled out of emptied lockers, cleared in an apparent frenzy.Mostly they had taken or destroyed anything with names, or ranks, but there were 01 patches, and one book that was filled with handwritten notes from weeks of training.Nearby, the site of the Salt Pit jail had apparently been razed a few months earlier. A New York Times satellite investigation found that, since spring, a cluster of buildings inside this part of the CIA compound had been levelled.Taliban officials said they did not have any details about the Salt Pit, or what had happened to the former jail. Rahman’s family are still searching for his body, which has never been returned to them.Other torture techniques recorded at the site included “rectal feeding”, shackling prisoners to bars overhead, and depriving inmates of toilet “privileges”, leaving them naked or wearing adult diapers.Construction equipment was abandoned on the site, with concrete slabs half poured. Next door, a building that had once been fortified with high-tech doors and equipment had apparently been firebombed, its interior as totally destroyed and reduced to ash as the cars outside.Destroying sensitive equipment at the base would have been complex, and there was evidence of several burn pits where everything from medical kits and a manual on leadership was put to the flames, along with larger pieces of equipment.The Taliban officials were jumpy about letting journalists into areas that had not been officially cleared. They had found several booby trap bombs in the rubble of the camp, Hassanain said, and were worried that there might be more.For days, helicopters ferried hundreds of people from the base to inside the airport, where men from the 01 force – aware they were likely to be prominent targets for reprisals – helped secure the perimeter in return for evacuation in the final hours, under a deal struck with the US.Untouched nearby was a recreation hall with snooker, ping-pong, darts and table football gathering dust. A box in the corner held brain teaser puzzles. It was unclear what the Taliban, once so austere that they even banned chess, would do with the trappings of western military downtime.TopicsAfghanistanThe ObserverTalibanCIACIA torture reportSouth and Central AsiaTortureWar crimesfeaturesReuse this content More

US domestic policyPelosi shifts infrastructure bill deadline to 31 October amid Biden frustrationSpeaker writes to House Democrats insisting that they will pass both bipartisan bill and wider social and environmental package Lauren ArataniSat 2 Oct 2021 15.11 EDTLast modified on Sat 2 Oct 2021 15.12 EDTThe House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has set a new deadline for the House to pass a major infrastructure spending bill after a week of negotiations left Joe Biden’s social and environmental policy overhaul plan in a limbo.In a letter to House Democrats on Saturday, Pelosi said that the House will have until Sunday 31 October to pass the $1tn bipartisan infrastructure bill, which passed the Senate in August.‘We’re going to get it done’: Biden vows to break impasse after Capitol Hill talksRead moreProgressive Democrats in the House refused to vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, despite pressure from their moderate counterparts, as leverage in negotiations over a separate bill that contains massive spending on many of Biden’s campaign promises, including increased access to childcare and action on climate change.“More time was needed to reach our goal of passing both bills, which we will,” Pelosi said in the letter.Biden and progressive Democrats have advocated an overhaul plan costing $3.5tn, but centrist Democrats have refused to agree to that cost. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a key centrist in negotiations, proposed a package of $1.5tn, a significant cut to Biden’s original plan.Refusing to agree on a price that low, progressive Democrats in turn declared on Friday that they would stall a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill until an agreement is reached on the overhaul plan.“We made all these promises to voters across the country that we were going to deliver on this agenda. It’s not some crazy leftwing wishlist,” Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a key House negotiator, told the Seattle Times on Friday.Centrist House Democrats indicated they were frustrated with the delayed vote on the infrastructure bill, with Josh Gottheimer, a leading centrist in the House, blasting Pelosi and progressive Democrats for stalling a vote on the infrastructure bill.“We cannot let this small faction on the far left … destroy the president’s agenda and stop the creation of 2 million jobs a year,” Gottheimer said in a statement.Talking to reporters on Saturday morning before he boarded a flight to his home in Delaware, where he is staying for the weekend, Biden said he was going to “work like hell” on selling his plan directly to the American people over the next month, educating Americans on what he has in mind for the plan.“I’m going to try to sell what I think the American people will buy,” he told reporters. “I believe that when the American people are aware of what’s in it, we’ll get it done.”Reflecting on the simmering angering between progressives and centrists in his party, Biden said: “Everybody’s frustrated. It’s a part of being in government, being frustrated.”In a rare visit to Congress, Biden told House Democrats in a private meeting on Friday that he is determined to get both bills passed, even if it means a smaller price tag for his government overhaul bill. Biden reportedly said that a compromise top line could be between $1.9tn and $2.3tn.“Even a smaller bill can make historic investments – historic investments in childcare, daycare, clean energy,” Biden told House Democrats, according to a person familiar with his remarks.In addition to negotiations over the overhaul bill, Democrats in Congress are trying to figure out a way to raise the debt ceiling to avoid the US defaulting for the first time in history. Republicans have indicated they will not vote in support of raising the debt ceiling.On Saturday, Biden told reporters that he hopes Republicans will not “be so irresponsible as to refuse to raise the debt limit”.“That would be totally unconscionable. Never been done before. And so I hope that won’t happen,” he said. TopicsUS domestic policyUS CongressUS politicsNancy PelosiHouse of RepresentativesJoe BidenDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

The fight to voteNative Americans‘They don’t include Native voices’: tribes fight to ensure their votes countAs the Native American population grows to the largest in modern history, groups say it’s vital that they organize to make sure they’re not left out of the redistricting process The fight to vote is supported byAbout this contentK More

How I wroteBarack Obama on how uncovering his past helped him plan his futureThe former president of the United States was at a crossroads in his life when he wrote his first book, Dreams from My Father Barack ObamaSat 2 Oct 2021 06.00 EDTI was in my early 30s when I wrote Dreams from My Father. At the time, I was a few years out of law school. Michelle and I were newly married and just beginning to think about having kids. My mother was still alive. And I was not yet a politician.I look back now and understand that I was at an important crossroads then, thinking hard about who I wanted to be in the world and what sort of contribution I could make. I was passionate about civil rights, curious about public service, full of loose ideas, and entirely uncertain about which path I should take. I had more questions than answers. Was it possible to create more trust between people and lessen our divides? How much did small steps toward progress matter – improving conditions at a school, say, or registering more people to vote – when our larger systems seemed so broken? Would I accomplish more by working inside existing institutions or outside of them?Behind all of this floated something more personal, a deeper set of unresolved questions: Who am I? Where do I come from? How do I belong?That’s what compelled me to start writing this book.A Promised Land by Barack Obama review – an impressive but incomplete memoirRead moreI’ve always believed that the best way to meet the future involves making an earnest attempt at understanding the past. It’s why I enjoy reading different accounts of history and why I value the insights of those who’ve been on this earth longer than I have. Some folks might see history as something we put behind us, a bunch of words and dates carved in stone, a set of dusty artefacts best stored in a vault. But for me, history is alive the same way an old-growth forest is alive, deep and rich, rooted and branching off in unexpected directions, full of shadows and light. What matters most is how we carry ourselves through that forest – the perspectives we bring, the assumptions we make, and our willingness to keep returning to it, to ask the harder questions about what’s been ignored, whose voices have been erased.These pages represent my early, earnest attempt to walk through my own past, to examine the strands of my heritage as I considered my future. In writing it, I was able to dwell inside the lives of my parents and grandparents, the landscapes, cultures and histories they carried, the values and judgments that shaped them – and that in turn, shaped me. What I learned through this process helped to ground me. It became the basis for how I moved forward, giving me the confidence to know I could be a good father to my children and the courage to know I was ready to step forward as a leader.The act of writing is exactly that powerful. It’s a chance to be inquisitive with yourself, to observe the world, confront your limits, walk in the shoes of others, and try on new ideas. Writing is difficult, but that’s kind of the point. You might spend hours pushing yourself to remember what an old classroom smelled like, or the timbre of your father’s voice, or the precise colour of some shells you saw once on a beach. This work can anchor you, and fortify you, and surprise you. In finding the right words, in putting in that time, you may not always hit upon specific answers to life’s big questions, but you will understand yourself better. That’s how it works for me, anyway.The young man you meet in these pages is flawed and full of yearning, asking questions of himself and the world around him, learning as he goes. I know now, of course, that this was just the beginning for him. If you’re lucky, life provides you with a good long arc. I hope that my story will encourage you to think about telling your story, and to value the stories of others around you. The journey is always worth taking. Your answers will come.TopicsHow I wroteAutobiography and memoirUS politicsHistory booksfeaturesReuse this content More

Joe Biden‘We’re going to get it done’: Biden vows to break impasse after Capitol Hill talks President meets Democrats with domestic agenda in jeopardyHopes of truce dashed after moderate condemns Pelosi’s tactics David Smith and Lauren Gambino in WashingtonFri 1 Oct 2021 20.03 EDTLast modified on Fri 1 Oct 2021 23.30 EDTJoe Biden has made a rare visit to Capitol Hill to meet privately with House Democrats amid a stalemate that has put his sprawling domestic agenda in jeopardy.Pledging to “get it done” after days of frantic negotiations that saw the party fail to strike an internal deal on a scaled-back version of Biden’s $3.5tn social and environmental policy overhaul, the president hoped to break an impasse even as hopes of compromise before the weekend faded.Far-right militia group membership surged after Capitol attack, hack showsRead more“It doesn’t matter when – it doesn’t matter whether it’s in six minutes, six days, or six weeks – we’re going to get it done,” Biden said, as he exited the caucus room.The visit comes a day after after the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, delayed a vote on part of his economic agenda, a bipartisan $1tn public works measure, in an embarrassing setback. Democrats returned to the Capitol on Friday deeply divided but determined to make progress on Biden’s ambitious economic vision.Pelosi had earlier promised that there would a “vote today” on the infrastructure measure, which progressive House lawmakers have maintained they would not support unless it is passed in tandem with the far more expansive $3.5tn package.But hopes that Biden had forged a truce among Democrats were dashed on Friday night when Josh Gottheimer, a leading moderate in the House, publicly condemned Pelosi for delaying the infrastructure vote.“It’s deeply regrettable that Speaker Pelosi breached her firm, public commitment to Members of Congress and the American people to hold a vote and to pass the once-in-a-century bipartisan infrastructure bill on or before September 27,” the congressman from New Jersey said in a statement.Gottheimer added: “We cannot let this small faction on the far left — who employ Freedom Caucus tactics, as described by the New York Times today — destroy the President’s agenda and stop the creation of two million jobs a year — including for the millions of hard-working men and women of labor.”The language appeared deliberately inflammatory. The reference to a “small faction on the far left” was sure to infuriate progressives who claim to have the White House and the vast majority of the Democratic caucus on their side. The Freedom Caucus is a group of conservative Republicans intent on pushing party leadership to the right.Gottheimer said: “This far left faction is willing to put the President’s entire agenda, including this historic bipartisan infrastructure package, at risk. They’ve put civility and bipartisan governing at risk.”In a further sign of internal tensions, Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney of New York issued a sharp response to Gottheimer’s assertions, tweeting that Biden had stood with Pelosi and 95% of House Democrats “and said the opposite: that his historic vision for America first requires a Build Back Better reconciliation deal. That’s the way a bipartisan infrastructure bill will win the votes to become law.”Pelosi confirmed there would be no infrastructure vote as more time was needed to negotiate.“While great progress has been made in the negotiations to develop a House, Senate and White House agreement on the Build Back Better Act, more time is needed to complete the task,” the House speaker said in a statement.Democrats remained deeply at odds over the scale and structure of the more expansive package which contains a host of progressive priorities, provisions to expand health care access, establish paid leave, combat climate change and reduce poverty – all underwritten by tax increases on wealthy Americans and corporations.Democrats are trying to score a major legislative victory with razor-thin majorities in both chambers. Failure would deny Biden much of his domestic agenda, leaving the party with little to show for their time controlling the White House, the Senate and House.Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has proposed a spending package of about $1.5tn – less than half the size of the proposal put forward by the president and Democratic leaders. Another Democratic centrist, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, declined to say whether she agreed with Manchin’s proposal.In the private meeting with House lawmakers, Biden reportedly discussed a compromise topline of $1.9tn to $2.3tn, according to a person in the room who spoke with the Associated Press.Congresswoman Madeleine Dean told MSNBC that Biden was “pragmatic” and “realistic” in the closed-door meeting with lawmakers. “He said, ‘Look, clearly I have to be straight up with you. It is not going to be the $3.5tn number that we would all like, or many many of us would like … What I ask of you are the programmatic things that must be in the bill, and then we can do the math from there’,” Dean said.Huddled together in an hours-long caucus meeting, Pelosi tried to steer the feuding factions within her party toward common ground after Thursday’s marathon negotiating session generated deepening acrimony and no deal.Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, emerged from the morning gathering optimistic that Democrats would eventually pass both bills. But she remained firm in her position – and confident in her members – that there the infrastructure bill would not move forward without assurances that the Senate would pass Biden’s larger bill.“We’ve seen more progress in the last 48 hours than we’ve seen in a long time on reconciliation,” she said, crediting progressives’ infrastructure revolt for forcing Manchin and Sinema to the negotiating table.The decision to postpone the infrastructure vote was seen as a victory for progressives who were unwavering in their resolve to “hold the line” and vote against the bill unless they received “ironclad” commitments that Biden’s proposed $3.5tn social and environmental package would also pass.Many progressives also say they will withhold support for the infrastructure bill until the Senate passes the second piece of Biden’s economic agenda, legislation that has yet to be written. Jayapal made clear this was her preference, but later left the door open to the possibility that the party could reach an agreement without a vote.“If there’s something else that’s short of a vote … that gives me those same assurances, I want to listen to that,” she told reporters.Why is Trump still making headlines? Politics Weekly Extra podcastRead moreThe stalemate also laid bare deep ideological fractures within the party. Unlike the debate over Barack Obama’s healthcare legislation a decade ago, progressives appear to be more closely aligned with the president and able to flex their political muscles. On Thursday they were united in making the case that centrists are now in the minority.Both pieces of legislation are critical to Biden’s economic vision. While he has staked his domestic agenda – and his legacy – on a $3.5tn social policy package, he invested precious political capital in courting Republicans to support the infrastructure bill, part of a campaign promise to usher in a new era of bipartisanship in Congress. The bill passed the Senate in August, with 19 Republican votes and great fanfare.But the spirit of bipartisanship dissipated quickly. In the House, Republican leaders lobbied members to vote against the bipartisan bill, forcing Democrats to come up with the votes on their own. Republicans are unified in opposition to the president’s broader spending-and-tax plan.The House is scheduled to leave Washington at the end of this week for a two-week recess but this could be delayed if no deal has been reached. Congress must also find a way to raise the debt ceiling to avoid the US defaulting for the first time in its history.TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsUS domestic policyDemocratsUS CongressUS SenateRepublicansnewsReuse this content More