US Politics

The US has reached an agreement with Pfizer to buy 500m doses of their coronavirus vaccine to distribute to nearly 100 countries around the world, as the centrepiece of Joe Biden’s initiative to help vaccinate the world against Covid-19, according to US reports.Under to the scheme, which Biden is expected to announce in the UK on Thursday, the US would pay for the vaccines at cost price. The first 200m doses would be distributed this year, and the remaining 300m in the first half of next year.According to reports, the vaccines will be donated through Covax, the global initiative to help developing countries face the pandemic, and would go to 92 lower-income countries and the African Union.The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal cited multiple unnamed sources familiar with the plan.The global vaccine initiative is part of Biden’s broader strategy of restoring America’s global influence and soft power, which he believed has been eroded by Donald Trump’s four years in office and the increasingly assertive foreign policies of China and Russia.Pfizer did not comment on the reports but its CEO, Albert Bourla, is expected to join the president for the announcement in the UK.Biden arrived in the UK on Wednesday evening and addressed US troops at the RAF Mildenhall airbase where Air Force One landed. He outlined his plans in general but did not give details of his planned vaccine diplomacy.The president intends to use the G7 summit in Cornwall, and the Nato and EU summits in Brussels over the next few days, to make a case for renewed democratic leadership in the world, as a bulwark against the encroachment of autocracies. A significant part of the discussions over the weekend will be about how to achieve a more equitable distribution of vaccines around the world.At a time when more than 40% of Americans and Britons are fully vaccinated, many of the world’s poorer countries have hardly begun to vaccinate their populations. Haiti has yet to administer a single vaccine, and is not due to receive its first shipment of 130,000 doses until next week.The G7 summit host, prime minister Boris Johnson, has called on G7 leaders to commit to vaccinating the entire world by the end of 2022.The US had already agreed on a contract to buy 300m Pfizer/BioNTech doses, so the global initiative will bring the country’s overall purchase to 800m.Before the new initiative, the Biden administration planned to share at least 80m  vaccine doses with the world by the end of the month, 19m of them going to Covax, the global scheme backed by the World Health Organization. An additional 6m shots would be channelled directly to India and other countries suffering severe outbreaks.Just over a month ago, the Biden administration announced its backing for a waiver on vaccine patents, with the aim of closing the vast “vaccine gap” between rich and poor countries – but the suggestion met resistance from European countries, who argued that patents were not the main bottleneck to production and distribution, and that waiving patents would discourage future pharmaceutical research and development.The White House coronavirus response coordinator, Jeffrey Zients, who is reported to have negotiated the deal with Pfizer over the past few weeks, has traveled to the UK with the president. In a statement on Wednesday, he said the president would use the “momentum” of the US inoculation campaign “to rally the world’s democracies around solving this crisis globally, with America leading the way to create the arsenal of vaccines that will be critical in our global fight against Covid-19”. More

Kamala Harris has returned to the US from her first foreign trip and big test since becoming vice-president – and taking over the hot-potato issue of immigration – battered by criticism over her harsh “Do not come” message to desperate migrants and her testy ambivalence over visiting the US-Mexico border.Harris arrived back on US soil from a three-day trip to Guatemala and Mexico just as Joe Biden flew out to the UK on Wednesday on his first overseas venture since winning the White House.His may be a higher-stakes visit aimed at reassuring European allies and confronting Russia after the divisive era of Donald Trump.But Harris’s more short-haul foray was never going to be plain sailing, either with the aim being to tackle “the root causes” of hundreds of thousands of migrants making the dangerous trek to America’s southern border, seeking entry to the US.Most are attempting unlawful entry or trying to appeal to the border authorities to allow them to apply for asylum through the US courts.With factors such as poverty and government corruption, a legacy of war and dictatorship, and as much foreign hindrance as help in Central American politics over the decades, any trip by a new US president or vice-president is fraught with high risk of failure.On top of that, newer trends such as increased migration forced by the climate crisis guaranteed that Harris was never going to achieve one-trip fixes.But although her hosts declared her visits a success, the “get tough” stance she touted with leaders over corruption was overshadowed by an awkward interview and criticism from US progressive torchbearers such as the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over her stark remarks aimed at migrants.Ocasio-Cortez called out Harris on Twitter, saying her comments were “disappointing to see”.“First, seeking asylum at any US border is a 100% legal method of arrival,” said the congresswoman, adding: “Second, the US spent decades contributing to regime change and destabilization in Latin America. We can’t help set someone’s house on fire and then blame them for fleeing.”Several human rights groups also spoke out to criticize Harris’s remarks.With unlawful crossings to the US over the US-Mexico border accelerating during the first months of the Biden administration, as US border authorities reported they encountered nearly 19,000 unaccompanied children crossing in March, the pressure on Harris has been intense.Biden put her in charge of dealing with the issue of the border in particular, within wider immigration policy, as the early weeks of his presidency featured stark reports and images of children crammed into detention centres on the US side of the border, with legal and social processing systems overwhelmed.Overall, more than 170,000 encounters were reported on the border in April, between migrants, mostly from Central America, and the US authorities, the highest level in more than 20 years.Harris, who has been under pressure at home to visit the US-Mexico border since she was given the role, but has not yet done so, focused her three-day visit on economic development, climate and food insecurity.In Guatemala, the origin of almost half the migrants gathering at the US border in recent months, Harris and the president, Alejandro Giammattei, expressed optimism that they could work together.The Biden administration has earmarked almost $4bn in commitments to help address the “root causes” of migration. Alongside that, Harris was also frank in her message, saying “the goal of our work is to help Guatemalans find hope at home”.But it was when Harris said in an address: “I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: ‘Do not come, do not come,’” that heads all over the US political and media landscape turned.It is no different a message than people in the Biden administration have delivered publicly before. But the stark statement actually made in a country where people are driven to head to the US by desperation prompted a strong response.Ocasio-Cortez described her comments as “disappointing” and noted that it is legal to seek asylum in the US from persecution in another country.Harris responded only obliquely, saying: “I’m really clear: we have to deal with the root causes and that is my hope. Period.”Harris was also forced to fend off criticism that she had yet to visit the US-Mexico border herself since becoming vice-president. Such visits are a perilous photo op for leaders looking to establish foreign and domestic policy credentials.And she dealt with the topic awkwardly when asked in an early morning TV interview about why she hadn’t visited the border this year, saying she hadn’t been to Europe either.“Well, we are going to the border,” Harris she added to NBC news anchor Lester Holt. “We have to deal with what’s happening at the border, there’s no question about that.”Moving on from a short stay in Guatemala to Mexico City, Harris sought to assure poor and threatened populations of Latin America on Tuesday that the United States has “the capacity to give people a sense of hope” and is focused on “tangible” results “as opposed to grand gestures”.The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said Mexico was in a completely new phase of relations with the US.Eduardo Gamarra, professor of international relations at Florida International University, told the Guardian it was an important trip. “Harris issued a very significant statement in terms of rebutting the Republicans’ position that Democrats are running an ‘open border’ policy, and she made it quite clear to Giammattei that the US is willing to invest but there have to be significant changes in the way corruption is handled,” he said.[embedded content] More

Dark money groups tied to Donald Trump’s inner circle and backed by people who have spread baseless claims about the 2020 presidential election appear to be playing a key role in funding an unprecedented review of 2.1m ballots in Arizona.Republicans in the Arizona state senate, which authorized the inquiry, allocated $150,000 in state funds to pay for it – just a fraction of the projected overall cost, which is still unknown. The state senate had enough money in its operating budget to pay for the investigation, the Arizona Mirror reported in April, but chose not to pay the full price.Instead, the effort is being paid for by private donors, who remain hidden from the public, according to a review by OpenSecrets and the Guardian. Arizona Republicans and Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based company overseeing the review, have refused to say who is providing the rest of the money.“It is wholly inappropriate that the Arizona state senate is hiding the mechanisms by which their sanctioned activity is being funded,” said Adrian Fontes, a Democrat who served as the top election official in Maricopa county, the target of the ballot review, until he lost his re-election bid last year. “The lack of transparency there is just grotesque.”*Questions about funds come as the Arizona senate has faced scrutiny for why it hired Cyber Ninjas, a firm with little experience in auditing elections to oversee its massive review. Doug Logan, the firm’s chief executive, expressed support for the idea that the election was stolen from Trump.Karen Fann, the president of the Arizona state senate, said last year she received a phone call from Trump thanking her for “pushing to prove any fraud”, according to emails obtained by American Oversight, a left-leaning watchdog group. Fann, a Republican, also said she had spoken with Rudy Giuliani, a Trump ally, multiple times last year.At least $150,000 of the inquiry’s funding has purportedly come from Voices and Votes, a 501(c)(4) run by Christina Bobb, an anchor for the One America News Network (OANN), a rightwing media network that has given air to election conspiracy theories. The group is also run with the White House correspondent Chanel Rion and Courtland Sykes, Rion’s fiance. Bobb spoke with Trump about the review, according to the Washington Post, and emailed Fann affidavits on behalf of Giuliani last year, emails show.Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterBobb frequently plugs the effort during shows, where she covers the Arizona review, and on social media, but told BuzzFeed that OANN is not “in any way” affiliated with her fundraising despite the dark money group being run by multiple OANN employees and being promoted on the network. Voices and Votes was incorporated in Wyoming in March, shortly before the inquiry was announced, by Greg Roeberg, an Arizona attorney. A press release from the Trump campaign last year listed a Greg Roeberg as a “key member” of Jewish Voices for Trump. Roeberg said in an email he was not involved with the charity beyond helping it with the initial legal papers. The group declined an interview request.L Lin Wood, the pro-Trump attorney behind a slew of lawsuits seeking to overturn election results last year, told Talking Points Memo that his non-profit, Fight Back, donated $50,000 to Voices and Votes for the review. But it is not clear what the money is actually going to since the groups are subject to few financial disclosure rules.Wood, who has promoted fundraising efforts for the review on Telegram, also told TPM that Cyber Ninja chief Logan worked out of Wood’s home to investigate 2020 election voter fraud claims.Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.com and an ardent Trump supporter, is also leading a group funding the effort. Byrne was involved in what Axios described as the “craziest meeting of the Trump presidency” – a December 2020 summit in the Oval Office that included Michael Flynn, and Sidney Powell, who falsely claimed voting machines had flipped votes for Trump and suggested he use government resources to seize voting machines. Byrne also reportedly screamed at representatives from the White House counsel’s office, saying they were not sufficiently helping to overturn the election.In April, Byrne’s non-profit, the America Project, launched a Fund the Audit campaign aiming to raise $2.8m. Byrne says he contributed $1m to the effort, but at least another $900,000 has come from unknown sources. Byrne’s non-profit is also helping vet workers who participate in the review, according to the Arizona Republic.Byrne also served as chief of another dark money group involved in the review, Defending the Republic, though he claims he resigned in April. Created by Powell, Defending the Republic published every Arizona lawmaker’s contact info on their website and promoted a misleading “Election Fraud Facts & Details“ document authored for the Arizona senate by Cyber Ninja’s Logan before the “audit” effort. The document contains disproven claims about voting machine software switching votes from Trump to Biden.Powell’s group also previously hired Wake Technology Services, Inc (Wake TSI), a subcontractor, to audit election equipment in Fulton county, Pennsylvania, at the request of Doug Mastriano, a state senator who aggressively suggested the election was stolen, according to county documents obtained by the Guardian.Paula Shives, a Democrat on the three-member county commission, was stunned that the company was allowed to inspect election materials last year. “Who authorized this? When was this scheduled? Who was notified and present during the process?” Shives wrote in a text message to the country’s election director and two commissioners that was obtained by OpenSecrets and the Guardian through a public records request.The lack of transparency there is just grotesqueRandy Bunch, a Republican county commissioner, replied that the review did not show any problems: “On a good note, they didn’t find one thing wrong and praise our team meaning Patty and our staff on how organized everything was and we come [sic] out with no flaws it all matched up.”Wake TSI submitted a draft report to county officials in February that appeared to back up that assessment, according to the Washington Post.But the copy of that Pennsylvania review uploaded on the county website contended Dominion Voting Systems did not meet the state’s certification requirements, documented “errors” in scanning ballots, and purportedly identified “non-certified” software installed in the county’s voting system. (Wake TSI did not respond to requests for an interview.)Wake TSI abruptly withdrew from the Arizona review in May, and it is unclear why. Mastriano was one of several Pennsylvania lawmakers who visited the audit site in early June, where he was interviewed by Bobb on OANN.*For weeks, observers have pointed out that the procedures in place for the unprecedented inquiry are shoddy and do not resemble a neutral audit. But Trump has also become increasingly focused on the Arizona review and possible similar efforts elsewhere. Trump has reportedly told people close to him he expects to be “reinstated” as president this summer – something that would be impossible under the current legal system.The influx of private funds comes as Republicans themselves, including in Arizona, have pushed to outlaw the use of private grants for election processes after charities stepped up to fund underresourced election officials during the pandemic. In particular, Republicans have targeted grants from organizations backed by hundreds of millions dollars of donations from Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.In April, Arizona’s governor, Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed a law prohibiting election officials from accepting private money to help run elections, saying it could weaken confidence in elections. Similar provisions have been enacted in Florida and Georgia this year.And dark money raised for the review may be going to more than just paying the firms conducting it.The Arizona state representative Mark Finchem, a strong supporter of the review and the “Stop the Steal” movement, claimed that his 501(c)(4) Guardian Defense Fund is “paying money for additional security at the site” in an interview with Steve Bannon on America’s Voice News.Finchem is currently campaigning to be Arizona’s next secretary of state, and claimed he had talked to Trump about the 2020 election in an appearance on the Twitch stream of Redpill78, which the New York Times reported promotes QAnon conspiracy theories. His attorney previously represented Cyber Ninjas.“Ironically, after outlawing transparent philanthropic funding of election administration, used to assist all voters, regardless of party, during a global pandemic, the Arizona senate now relies upon secret funding for their ‘audit’,” said David Becker, the executive director for the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a group that received funding from Zuckerberg and Chan last year.*Key individuals behind the dark money groups have also been using a network of Telegram channels to coordinate messaging and amplify each other’s content.One of the main Telegram channels boosting the groups is Arizona Red Roots. Using Telegram and other messaging platforms, review proponents have quietly coordinated efforts and distributed “AZ Ground Troops Updates” detailing strategies pushing for the ballot review.An April “AZ Ground Troops Update” document downloaded from Telegram lists a number of key players in the Arizona review, including Power of the Meme, a site dedicated to making memes to promote the Arizona review and “Demand a Forensic Kinematic Audit”.In messages throughout March and April, organizers in the channel pushed followers to pressure the Arizona legislature to hire Jovan Pulitzer, a treasure hunter best known for inventing a cat-shaped device that allowed people to scan barcodes in magazines to find the product online. PC World magazine ranked it as one of the 25 worst tech products of all time.Pulitzer has become a kind of folk hero among those who believe the election was stolen (he has his own song) and Telegram messages in the channel told users Pulitzer was the only person who could do a necessary audit.“If New Hampshire uses Jovan + other auditors, why not AZ? Jovan, since Nov 2020, was the first and only one to propose auditing paper ballots in an ingenious and novel way – never proposed & never before done! And it is what we need for the best chance to find ballots pre-printed from China. Or ballots filled out by the same fraudulent person,” reads one message.The effort appears to have been successful. Pulitzer’s technology is reportedly being used by those running the Arizona review to inspect the quality of ballot paper and search for watermarks – a process election officials have said is unlikely to detect fraud. Officials are also reportedly using the technology to look for bamboo fibers in ballots, an echo of a conspiracy theory Pulitzer has endorsed suggesting ballots were flown into Arizona from Asia.Even some people involved in advising the review are skeptical of Pulitzer’s involvement.“This guy is nuts,” John Brakey, an activist who is helping with the Arizona process, told the Guardian in May. “He’s a fraudster.”*Even as experts have warned of the dangers of the Arizona review, it has fast emerged as a model for similar efforts elsewhere. Trump on Friday called for the Pennsylvania senate to authorize a similar effort, just days after Mastriano and other lawmakers visited the Arizona count. Activists in New Hampshire unsuccessfully tried to get Pulitzer involved in a review of a local election there. And there are bubbling efforts in Michigan to conduct a “forensic audit” – language that mirrors what is being used to describe the Arizona effort.Some of the firms and individuals conducting the review also stand to potentially benefit from a proliferation of similar efforts across the country.A recently dismissed Michigan case that was promoted and fundraised for in the Arizona Telegram channels featured Cyber Ninja’s Logan as an expert witness. Another expert witness in the case was Benjamin Cotton, the founder of CyFIR, a digital forensics firm that is helping conduct the Arizona audit.The plaintiff’s attorney, Matthew DePerno, raised around $300,000 for an “Election Fraud Defense Fund” to support the failed case in Michigan.And while the amount of money raised through online fundraising platforms is publicly available, the total amount of money changing hands between each of the individuals and organizations involved in the efforts is subject to few disclosure requirements.Fontes, the Arizona Democrat, said it was “wholly inappropriate” for the Arizona state senate not to disclose who was funding the effort.“They have permitted this to happen, it happens under the authority of the Arizona state senate, this is senate president Karen Fann’s operation,” he said. “She can set whatever rules she wants to set. She has chosen secrecy. She has chosen to obfuscate. And she is trying to deflect responsibility for the lack of transparency.” More

“Our entire democracy is now at risk.” That was the note of alarm sounded last week by a group of prominent intellectuals on both the left and the right. The source of their concern are the Republican efforts, underway across the nation, to operationalize the “big lie”: the bogus claim that a vast conspiracy of fraud cost Trump the 2020 election.Consider the audit recently ordered by the Republican-controlled state senate in Arizona of the 2.1m votes cast in Maricopa county in the 2020 presidential contest. Lest the audit confirm what has already been proven ad nauseam – that the count was accurate and free of fraud – the senate chose an obscure company called Cyber Ninjas to conduct the recount. Based out of Florida, Cyber Ninjas has no record of ever having conducted an election audit and neglected to even submit a bid for the Arizona job. But the tiny firm did have one thing going for it: its CEO, Doug Logan, a self-proclaimed “follower of Jesus Christ” and proud father of 11, was on record attacking the 2020 election as riddled with fraud.Inspired by the Arizona case, Republicans in Georgia have demanded that their state undertake a similar “forensic” audit of the 2020 presidential count. And last Wednesday, a group of Republican state lawmakers from Pennsylvania paid a visit to the Arizona audit site, demanding that their home state conduct a like review.The aim of these efforts is not to overturn the result of the 2020 election, despite Donald Trump’s fantasies to the contrary. Evidently the former president anticipates his reinstatement in the White House roughly two months from now, and his coming rallies will no doubt give him the opportunity to grandly cast himself as a latter-day Napoleon returning triumphantly to power from his palmy exile. But the audits are not designed to stamp Trump a ticket back to DC – at least not at present. The goal is not to oust Biden now, but to conspire against his reelection in 2024.Suppressing the Black vote has been a staple of Republican politics for decadesIn this, the audits are of a piece with larger Republican campaigns to disenfranchise huge numbers of voters – specifically Black voters. The very Arizona Republicans who retained Cyber Ninjas recently passed a law that dramatically restricts the distribution of mail-in ballots. Republicans in Georgia have passed a sweeping law that limits the use of drop boxes and criminalizes the simple act of offering water to citizens stuck on long voting queues. And Texas Republicans are on the cusp of passing the most restrictive law of all: one that would restrict absentee ballots and ban drive-through voting altogether. Dozens of other states with Republican-controlled legislatures are racing to pass similar measures.True, suppressing the Black vote has been a staple of Republican politics for decades. But what distinguishes these new laws is both their sweep and the cynicism of their justification. For it is one thing to use the specter of possible fraud to justify such measures; another, to operationalize a lie about history to justify restrictions in the name of electoral integrity.Indeed, perhaps the most disturbing aspect of these new laws is that they lower the bar for partisans to challenge and alter election results. In Georgia, for example, the new law prohibits the secretary of state from certifying results, a move designed to target Brad Raffensperger, the intrepid Republican who refused Trump’s demand that the secretary “find” enough votes to overcome Biden’s victory in the Peach State. And in Texas, partisans would no longer need to show that improper votes had materially affected the outcome of an election in order to seek to reverse the results.In the words of the bipartisan group, thanks to these changes, “several states … no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections”. Here I might add –that is precisely what the Republicans want. Fair elections entail uncertainty, and Republican lawmakers want to have none of it. They no longer trust the democratic process, not because they genuinely believe it corrupt, but because they legitimately fear that they cannot fairly win. And so, in good Orwellian fashion, they labor to create the very rigged system they falsely claim to be the victims of. Should their efforts to systematically restrict the voting opportunities of millions of citizens fail to secure them the White House in 2024, they will have in place the mechanisms Trump invoked but could not fully control in 2020. If Republicans have their way, come 2024, Trump or his rough successor will not have the likes of a Brad Raffensperger standing in their way.
Lawrence Douglas is the author, most recently, of Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2o2o and is also a contributing opinion writer for the Guardian US. He teaches at Amherst College More

Top Democrats are preparing to make the case to impose new limits on the filibuster, in a move that could bring to a head six months of smoldering tensions over an expected Republican blockade of President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda.The Senate had its first filibuster of this Congress last week, when Republicans used the tactical rule to block a bipartisan House-passed measure to create a 9/11-style commission to investigate the Capitol attack perpetrated a pro-Trump mob.Even as a majority of senators voted in favor of the commission, the bill’s defeat at the hands of Republicans deploying the filibuster underscored the ease with which legislation can be blocked under current Senate rules that require a 60-vote margin in the 100-strong chamber.Republicans at the same time last week delayed a bipartisan measure aimed at improving American competitiveness with China, also proving to Democrats that the party was more interested in denying legislative wins to Biden than advancing bills that they helped write.Now, in an attempt to demonstrate Republicans have all but turned the filibuster into a weapon to wage bad-faith politics, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer is embarking on a strategy to force votes on some of Biden’s most high-profile measures.The idea is to demonstrate to Democrats opposed to curbing the filibuster – most notably West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema – that Republicans will sink any Democratic policy, giving Schumer no choice but to defuse the procedural rule in order to pass Biden’s vision.The problem, as Democrats see it, is that Republicans have effectively rewritten Senate rules to force supermajorities for bills that carry widespread public and congressional support. Filibustering bills, once extremely rare, has now become routine.“Will our Republican colleagues let the Senate debate the bill, or will they engage in another partisan filibuster of urgent legislation? We will soon see,” Schumer said last week, previewing his intentions.It is a replica of the playbook followed by then-Senate majority leader Harry Reid in 2013 to gather Democratic support to impose limits on the filibuster, after Republicans blocked former President Barack Obama’s picks for cabinet posts and the federal judiciary.But it remains far from clear whether Schumer can find the same success in persuading the holdouts in the Senate Democratic caucus to move ahead with what is known on Capitol Hill as the “nuclear option” of limiting the filibuster.The political moment confronting Schumer is far darker than the one experienced by Reid, who by virtue of having a larger Democratic majority in the 2013 Senate, did not need to convince all of his senators, such as Manchin, to support changing the rules.In addition, Manchin has come out publicly against making any reforms to the filibuster so often to this Congress, that he may be unable to backtrack even if successfully convinced of the need for imposing new restrictions.Writing in a recent op-ed published in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Manchin warned that “partisan voting legislation will destroy the already weakening binds of our democracy”, and reiterated he would not vote to remove or modify the filibuster.The situation is similar with Sinema, who said during the Memorial Day recess that she would not budge on reforming the filibuster, having previously noted the perils of changing Senate rules that offer the minority party wide latitude to block action.But with Biden’s ambitious political agenda imperiled by expected Republican filibusters, Schumer has reached the point where he believes the only way to pass bills offered by Democrats is to escalate the fight, according to a source familiar with his thinking.The pressure is only likely to increase on Manchin and Sinema in the coming weeks, with Schumer pledging this month to hold a vote on S1, the sweeping voting rights measure expanding ballot access and controls on campaign contributions, known as the For the People Act.In the struggle for voting rights, Democrats have rested their hopes on S1 for turning back a wave of new voting restrictions that grew out of former president Donald Trump’s lies about widespread election fraud enacted by Republican statehouses nationwide.The political stakes, as well as the implications for the country at large, are huge: Democrats believe the bill’s passage could allow them to overrule such state-level mandates, while its failure could allow Republicans to marginalize Black, Asian and minority voters.Against such a backdrop, Schumer’s plan has rattled Republicans. And on Monday, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell railed against the planned series of votes, slamming it as a partisan ploy that is “transparently designed to fail”.“Senate Democrats intend to focus this month on the demands of their radical base,” McConnell said. More

Idaho’s Republican lieutenant governor and gubernatorial candidate, Janice McGeachin, attended a gathering where she was endorsed in a glowing introductory speech by a rightwing militia leader, as revealed in a video obtained by the Guardian.The video shows Eric Parker, who was charged over his role in the standoff in 2014 at Bundy Ranch in New Mexico where he was pictured pointing an assault rifle at federal agents, reminding McGeachin that she told him at an earlier meeting that “if I get in, you’re going to have a friend in the governor’s office”.In the same speech, Parker tells the small audience that when he sought McGeachin’s assistance in the case of Todd Engel, another Bundy Ranch attendee who was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2019, he showed her sealed evidence from the trial.He recalled saying to her: “I’m not sure this is legal” and that she replied: “I want to see it,”after which time he said she “started writing letters to the Department of Justice” and “rallying support” on behalf of the imprisoned man.Parker posted the speech video on his Telegram channel on 19 May, the same day that McGeachin publicly announced her candidacy for governor, where she may be up against the incumbent, fellow Republican Brad Little, who is yet to clarify his intentions.In his endorsement, Parker tells the audience: “We need to do everything we can to get her where she can do the most good for us … we got to get her in there for us.” A few moments later McGeachin walks into frame and the two embrace.McGeachin has encountered previous controversies involving links with extremist groups. In 2018 she refused to answer media questions as to whether she was using Three Percenter members as security during her gubernatorial run. In 2019, she was pictured with Three Percenters who were rallying in support of Engel.She has also offered support to anti-mask and anti-lockdown protesters in the state, who include Ammon Bundy’s Peoples Rights Network.In his speech in the video, Parker also recalled McGeachin signing a letter in support of him, as part of an effort led by far right Idaho representative, Dorothy Moon, during his own federal prosecution in Nevada for his own role in the standoff.Parker pleaded guilty in 2018 to a misdemeanor after two hung-jury trials on felony charges including including conspiracy, extortion, assault and obstruction, and eighteen 18 months in custody. Engel’s trial was vacated by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last August.Earlier that year, Parker founded the Real 3% of Idaho as an unincorporated nonprofit organization. In late 2020, he claimed that the organization had 2,500 members around the state, and has repeatedly denied that the group is a militia.A 1 June video on Parker’s 3% of Idaho YouTube channel shows Parker and Engel drilling with assault rifles on a rural property, and features the title “Eric and Todd, Idaho’s gunmen celebrate Memorial day”.Parker is not shy of controversy. In a 2 May photograph on Parker’s Telegram account Parker stands side by side with Nate Silvester, who was at that time still a deputy with the marshal’s office in Bellevue, Idaho, just miles away from Parker’s address in Hailey in Blaine county. Parker identifies Silvester only as “Officer Funny”, presumably a reference to the fact that the Deputy was enjoying a moment of viral fame after he posted a video to TikTok mocking the tweets of LeBron James, who had tweeted protesting at the fatal police shooting of Ohio teen Ma’Khia Bryant.Following Silvester’s 24 April video, which said among other things that the officer who shot Bryant “did the right thing”, the city of Bellevue placed him on administrative leave, and then fired him on 29 May.Lindsay Schubiner, program director at the Western States Center, a progressive non-profit whose work includes monitoring extremist groups in the region, said that Parker’s video “demonstrated his cozy relationship with McGeachin”.She described the relationship between such a senior politician and the far-right militia figure as “deeply disturbing”.Schubiner added that McGeachin “has consistently sought the support and backing of extreme, anti-democratic movements in Idaho”, and that “no public official has any business advancing the agenda of an anti-democratic paramilitary group”.Neither McGeachin nor Parker responded to repeated attempts to contact them for comment. More

The US Senate has overwhelmingly approved a bill to boost American semiconductor production and the development of artificial intelligence and other technology in the face of growing international competition, most notably from China.The 68-32 vote for the bill on Tuesday demonstrates how confronting China economically is an issue that unites both parties in Congress. It is a rare unifying issue in an era of division as pressure grows on Democrats to change Senate rules to push past Republican opposition and gridlock.The centerpiece of the bill is a $50bn emergency allotment to the US commerce department to boost semiconductor development and manufacturing through research and incentive programs previously authorised by Congress. Overall, the bill would increase spending by about $250bn, with most of the spending occurring in the first five years.The bill now heads to the House of Representatives, which earlier passed a different version. The two will have to be reconciled into a single bill before it is sent to the White House for the president’s signature.Joe Biden said he was “encouraged” by the Senate’s passage of the United States Innovation and Competition Act.“We are in a competition to win the 21st century, and the starting gun has gone off,” Biden said.“As other countries continue to invest in their own research and development, we cannot risk falling behind. America must maintain its position as the most innovative and productive nation on Earth.”Supporters described the bill as the biggest investment in scientific research that the country has seen in decades. It comes as the nation’s share of semiconductor manufacturing globally has steadily eroded from 37% in 1990 to about 12% now, and as a chip shortage has exposed vulnerabilities in the US supply chain.“The premise is simple, if we want American workers and American companies to keep leading the world, the federal government must invest in science, basic research and innovation, just as we did decades after the second world war,” said Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer.“Whoever wins the race to the technologies of the future is going to be the global economic leader, with profound consequences for foreign policy and national security as well.“If we do nothing, our days as the dominant superpower may be ending. We don’t mean to let those days end on our watch. We don’t mean to see America become a middling nation in this century.”The bill has a number of other China-related provisions, including prohibiting the social media app TikTok from being downloaded on government devices, and would block the purchase of drones manufactured and sold by companies backed by the Chinese government.It would also allow diplomats and Taiwanese military to display their flag and wear their uniforms while in the US on official businesses, and creates broad new mandatory sanctions on Chinese entities engaged in US cyberattacks or theft of US intellectual property from US firms. It provides for a review of export controls on items that could be used to support human rights abuses.The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, backed the bill but said it was incomplete because it did not incorporate more Republican-sponsored amendments.“Needless to say, final passage of this legislation cannot be the Senate’s final word on our competition with China,” he said. “It certainly won’t be mine.”Senators slogged through days of debates and amendments leading up to Tuesday’s final vote. Schumer’s office said 18 Republican amendments will have received votes as part of passage of the bill. It also said the Senate this year has already held as many roll call votes on amendments than it did in the last Congress, when the Senate was under Republican control.While the bill enjoys bipartisan support, a core group of Republican senators has reservations about its costs.One of the bill’s provisions would create a new directorate focused on artificial intelligence and quantum science with the National Science Foundation. The bill would authorize up to $29bn over five years for the new branch within the foundation, with an additional $52bn for its programs.Rand Paul, a Republican senator for Kentucky, said Congress should be cutting the foundation’s budget, not increasing it. He called the agency “the king of wasteful spending”. The agency finances about a quarter of all federally supported research conducted by America’s colleges and universities.The lead Republican on the committee also weighed in to support the bill.“This is an opportunity for the United States to strike a blow on behalf of answering the unfair competition that we are seeing from communist China,” said Roger Wicker.Senators have tried to strike a balance when calling attention to China’s growing influence. They want to avoid fanning divisive anti-Asian rhetoric when hate crimes against Asian Americans have spiked during the coronavirus pandemic.Senators added provisions that reflect shifting attitudes toward China’s handling of the Covid-19 outbreak. One would prevent federal money for the Wuhan Institute of Virology as fresh investigations proceed into the origins of the virus and possible connections to the lab’s research. The city registered some of the first coronavirus cases. More