US Politics

The Fox News host Sean Hannity was criticised for appearing at a Trump rally in 2018 but according to a new book he was involved again with Trump’s campaign in 2020, helping write an ad that aired on his primetime show.Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost, by Mike Bender, senior White House reporter for the Wall Street Journal, will be published in August.News of its contents, including “some amazingly hilarious revelations” about Mike Pence, Rudy Giuliani, Roger Stone, Tucker Carlson, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump “and the rest of the Trump posse”, was reported by Punchbowl News.According to the news site, the ad known to Trump insiders as “the Hannity ad” and “the one Hannity wrote” ran only during Hannity’s show.An anonymous Trump aide is reported as saying “Hannity said this is our best spot yet” but Bender reports: “Inside the campaign, the spot was mocked mercilessly – mostly because of the dramatic, over-the-top language and a message that seemed to value quantity over quality.“Donald Trump himself, in a post-election interview with Bender, did not dispute that Hannity wrote the ad, which called [Joe] Biden a ‘47-year swamp creature’ who had ‘accomplished nothing’ and supported a ‘radical, socialist Green New Deal’.”Such language attacking Biden’s long career in the Senate and as vice-president to Barack Obama was used by Trump advisers.In October, for example, senior adviser Jason Miller told reporters: “The contrast between a 47-year swamp creature in Joe Biden and a businessman in President Trump has been a major theme of this campaign and I would expect it to be so through election day.”Bender reports that the Trump campaign thought the Hannity ad “so useless that they limited it to exactly one show: Hannity … If Trump and Hannity watched the spot on television – and were satisfied enough to stop asking about the commercial – that seemed to be the best result of the ad. The cost of that investment: $1.5m.”Hannity denied writing the ad, telling Bender: “The world knows that Sean Hannity supports Donald Trump. But my involvement specifically in the campaign – no. I was not involved that much. Anybody who said that is full of shit.”But Hannity has form. In 2016, he was reprimanded by Fox News after he endorsed Trump in a campaign video. In 2018, he appeared with Trump at a rally in Missouri – and was reprimanded again.Before the event, shortly before the November midterm elections, Hannity tweeted: “To be clear, I will not be on stage campaigning with the president. I am covering the final rally for the show.” He then presented his show from the venue, telling viewers to vote Republican and echoing party slogans.On stage, Trump praised his allies at Fox News, saying: “They’re very special. They’ve done an incredible job for us. They’ve been with us from the beginning.”He then called Hannity up to join him. As reported by the Associated Press, Hannity “hugged the president … and, after echoing Trump’s traditional epithets about the media, recited some economic statistics”.Another host, Jeanine Pirro, also appeared on stage.Amid a storm of criticism, Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, a liberal watchdog, said Hannity’s behaviour was “dangerous for democracy and a threat to a free press”.Hannity said he had been surprised to be invited on stage.Fox News said it did not “condone any talent participating in campaign events … This was an unfortunate distraction and has been addressed.” More

Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterConservative activists across America are pushing efforts to review the 2020 vote more than six months after the election, a move experts say is a dangerous attempt to continue to sow doubt about the results of the 2020 election that strikes at the heart of America’s democratic process.Encouraged by an ongoing haphazard review of 2.1m ballots in Arizona, activists are pushing to review votes or voting equipment in California, Georgia, Michigan, and New Hampshire.Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, the powerful speaker of the state house of representatives recently hired ex-law enforcement officers, including one with a history of supporting Republicans, to spend the next three months investigating claims of fraud. At least one of the officers hired has a history of supporting GOP claims. The announcement also came after state officials announced they found just 27 cases of potential fraud in 2020 out of 3.3m votes cast.The reviews are not going to change the 2020 election results or find widespread fraud, which is exceedingly rare. Nonetheless, the conservative activists behind the effort – many of whom have little election experience – have championed the reviews as an attempt to assuage concerns the 2020 election was stolen. If the probes don’t turn up anything, they will only serve to increase confidence in elections, proponents say.But experts see something much more dangerous happening. Continuing to review elections, especially after a result has been finalized, will allow conspiracy theories to fester and undercut the authority of legitimately elected officials, they say. Once election results are certified by state officials, they have long been considered final and it is unprecedented to continue to probe results months after an official is sworn in. It’s an issue that gets at the heart of America’s electoral system – if Americans no longer have faith their officials are legitimately elected, they worry, the country is heading down an extremely dangerous path.“It is either a witting or unwitting effort to handcuff democratic self-governance,” said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Research.The efforts also come at the same moment that Republican legislatures around the country are pushing new restrictions to restrict voting access. Unable to point to evidence of significant fraud, Republican lawmakers have frequently said that new restrictions are needed to restore confidence in elections.In New Hampshire, activists have tried to co-opt an audit in the 15,000 person town of Windham to try and resolve a legitimate discrepancy in vote totals for a state representative race. They unsuccessfully tried to pressure officials there to drop experienced auditors in favor of Jovan Pulitzer, a conspiracy theorist reportedly involved in the Arizona recount who has become a kind of celebrity among those who believe the election was stolen. Even though the experienced auditors have found no evidence of wrongdoing, activists have continued to float baseless theories of wrongdoing in a Telegram channel following audits.“Nothing today is showing evidence of fraud. Nothing today is showing evidence of digital manipulation of the machines,” Harri Hursti, an election expert and one of the auditors, said this week, according to WMUR. “It’s amazing how much disinformation and dishonest reporting has been spreading.”Activists are also pressuring officials in Cheboygan county, Michigan to let an attorney affiliated with Sidney Powell, a Trump ally who brought baseless lawsuits after the election, conduct an audit of election equipment. The chair of the board of commissioners told the Detroit News he could not recall a more contentious issue debated before the board in more than two decades.The Michigan efforts prompted a letter from the state’s top election official, who warned the clerks in Cheboygan and Antrim county – another hotbed of conspiracy theories – that boards didn’t have authority to order audits and not to turn over election equipment to unaccredited outside firms, the Washington Post reported. Michigan conducted more than 250 audits after the 2020 race that affirmed the results.Dominion voting systems, which sold equipment to the state, also warned that counties may not be able to use machines in future elections if they turned them over to uncertified auditors.“We have every reason to want transparency,” Jocelyn Benson, the state’s top election official, said in an interview. “But that’s not what this is. This is about an effort, as has been proved time and time again by the actions of these individuals, in Arizona and elsewhere, this is an effort to actually spread falsehoods and misinformation under the guise of transparency.”San Luis Obispo county in the central coast of California has been another target for calls for an audit. During a meeting earlier this month, officials played hours of recorded messages calling for an audit, including one asking whether Tommy Gong, the county’s clerk and recorder, was a member of the communist party.Activists are also targeting Fulton county, Georgia, another place that was at the center of Trump’s baseless election attacks last year. Earlier in May, a local judge said that an group led by Garland Favorito, who has reportedly pushed conspiracy theories about 9/11 and the JFK assassination, could inspect absentee ballots, though in a key break from the Arizona review, the judge made it clear that the actual ballots would have to remain in county officials’ custody. Georgia has already manually recounted all of the ballots in the state, which confirmed Joe Biden’s win over Trump last year.Even in Arizona, the crown jewel of the audit movement, activists may have plans to do even more auditing after the current review of 2.1m ballots wraps up. Republicans are finalizing a plan to use untested software to analyze images of ballots, the Arizona Republic reported Friday.“Rarely do the losers believe the they have lost, but historically those who fell short graciously concede once all legal channels are exhausted,” said Tammy Patrick, a former election official in Maricopa county who now serves as a senior adviser at the Democracy Fund.“The proliferation of these actions undermine and erode the very foundation of election integrity and our adversaries need only sit back and watch as we chip away at our democratic norms. We should be telling the American voter the truth – the election had integrity, real audits and recounts were done, court challenges heard.” More

Former US Senate majority leader Harry Reid may be retired from Congress, but he still has ideas on how lawmakers should study unidentified flying objects, or UFOs.A report detailing US military encounters with UFOs requested by the Senate intelligence committee is due to be released in June, (although it may be delayed). However, the findings should not be seen as the end of the current investigations into UFOs or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), he said.“Congress should make this an ongoing program. I don’t think the report is going to tell us too much. I think they need to study it more and not just have one shot at it,” Reid told the Guardian.The former Democratic senator from Nevada has long been fascinated by UFOs and has been increasingly more vocal on the subject since his retirement in 2017.In 2007, Reid joined his colleagues Senators Ted Stevens, a Republican from Alaska, and Daniel Inouye, a Democrat from Hawaii, to invest $22m in a clandestine Pentagon operation that would be called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). The program investigated military reports of UFOs and other inexplicable aerial objects. It was shut down in 2012.“They had many sightings, hundreds and hundreds of these sightings. I didn’t know if it would be 20 or 40 – I was stunned – it was hundreds of them,” Reid said.AATIP was the predecessor to the current Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force, which is expected to release its findings shortly.The US is enjoying an exponential surge in interest – and rapid shedding of taboos – regarding taking UFOs seriously. With scientists and high-profile politicians weighing in on the conversation – including former President Barack Obama, Reid’s efforts are now more fully appreciated. He compares the current era with that of the Wright Brothers and the beginnings of modern air travel.“I believe it’s just as if we were starting airplanes. Airplanes were not understood very quickly. There’s so much to learn. Technologically, everything today is happening quickly. UFOs fascinate people who are pilots, physicists, because they can’t understand how these UFOS have no vapor trail, no lights on them, yet they can go so fast, so quickly. If it was under the technology we have today it would kill the pilots. We’re at the infancy of it,” he said.When asked about the role of private sector companies and space travel, he expressed admiration for entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, who the former senator said he has met “several times”.“We’ve not talked about UFOs because the last time I met with him we weren’t even talking about UFOs and now we are,” Reid said, leaving the door open for that conversation with the tech mogul.“The work that Musk has done is really breathtaking and how it has influenced the public forum today … people are fascinated by what he’s doing. We have these spaceships going up and coming back, he fixes them up … sends them back up,” he said referring to SpaceX’s successful launches of reusable rockets.Reid also expressed optimism that there are people alive now who may live to see much more commonly available space travel in their lifetimes.“There’s every indication that there’s going to be a lot more space travel, they’ll have colonies on the moon and we’ll have room beyond that,” he said. More

Republicans in Texas are already plotting to resurrect their fight for sweeping voting restrictions after Democratic lawmakers walked out of the state capitol and blocked an 11th-hour attempt to ram through legislation that would have made it harder to cast a ballot.Texas governor Greg Abbott – who leads the state’s domineering Republican majority – has announced he will include the high-stakes issue on his agenda when he reconvenes the legislature for a rapid-fire special session. He called the failure of the bill “deeply disappointing”.Abbott, who says “election integrity” remains an emergency in Texas, now plans to call a special session – essentially legislative overtime, where lawmakers consider issues on a sped-up timeline. When the session will begin remains unclear.But advocates are still painting last night’s historic show of force as an inflection point for the Texas legislature and America, when Democrats shirked business as usual for aggressive tactics that matched the urgency of a teetering democracy.“The fight you saw last night is the fight that will remain and continue,” state representative Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democrat representing San Antonio, told the Guardian. “That’s our commitment.”Senate Bill 7, an omnibus bill that restricts voter access, seemed almost destined to become law at the start of Texas’s legislative session, as powerful Republican leaders invoked baseless claims of “election integrity” to push for a virtual overhaul of the state’s already notoriously byzantine voting system.SB7 was one proposal among a larger blitz of at least 389 restrictive voting bills introduced across the country this legislative cycle, bolstered by Republicans’ unsubstantiated assertions of widespread voter fraud during last year’s election.The Texas bill drew ire from business leaders, voting rights advocates and left-leaning politicians, some of whom dubbed it “Jim Crow 2.0” and noted the disproportionate impact it would likely have on voters of color. But Republican lawmakers still strong-armed their way through procedural maneuvers and overnight votes, relying on backroom dealings and avoiding public scrutiny while advancing the legislation.“People want a fair system. And they saw what happened, and they know that this is a cynical attempt at holding onto power,” said Charlie Bonner, communications director at the civic engagement non-profit Move Texas.“These are people who are trying to stack the deck, and they’re doing it in the middle of the night.”SB7 has gone through a series of dizzying changes since it first passed the state senate in early April, culminating in a Frankenstein bill that attempted to reconcile both chambers’ priorities, plus add new provisions in the final stretch.The bill would have made it a state jail felony for a public official to proactively solicit or send vote by mail applications, restricted the use of drop boxes, banned 24-hour and drive-thru voting and lowered the bar for overturning an election, among other measures.After months of controversy, it was still teed up to meet a midnight deadline Sunday night, when it needed to clear the House to land on Abbott’s desk. But, after being silenced and boxed out of deliberations, Democrats decided to go nuclear, preventing the necessary quorum for a vote.“The eyes of the nation were watching Texas, and we wanted to make very clear that Texas Democrats would fight tooth and nail to defend voting rights,” Martinez Fischer said.Now, even as the regular legislative session concludes, the fight is far from over as Abbott plans his special session. Texas Lt Governor Dan Patrick has already endorsed Abbott’s plan, and state representative Briscoe Cain, who spearheaded the push for voter restrictions in the House, has tweeted that he was “ready to get back to work”.“They’re gonna want this really, really bad. They’re gonna want this probably even more now,” said Carisa Lopez, political director of the nonprofit watchdog Texas Freedom Network.But the special session also provides an opportunity for more scrutiny, especially after Republicans routinely relied on behind closed doors negotiations during the regular session, evading public testimony and accountability.“Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” Bonner said. “And so what we can do in this legislative process is shine a light on these bad actors and voter suppressors, and make them feel the pressure of the entire world watching what’s happening in Texas right now.” More

In a speech marking 100 years since the Tulsa race massacre, Joe Biden called on Americans to think upon “the deep roots of racial terror” in the United States and to destroy systemic racism in their society.In hard-hitting words as part of a declaration of a day of remembrance for the hundreds of Black victims of the 1921 mass killing in Oklahoma, Biden used unusually strong language to describe America’s history of racial strife.“On this solemn centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre, I call on the American people to reflect on the deep roots of racial terror in our nation and recommit to the work of rooting out systemic racism across our country,” Biden said in a statement.Between 31 May and 1 June, white mobs attacked the historical Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, an area so prosperous and successful it was known as the “Black Wall Street”. They killed an estimated 300 residents, displaced many more and burnt many blocks of the city to the ground.Though it was one of the worst acts of racial violence in US history, its anniversary has seemingly gone little marked by much of America, until anti-racism protests in the wake of the death of George Floyd triggered a reckoning over racism in America.In the statement Biden said that the federal government had played in keeping white and Black Americans unequal in the decades after the massacre by policies that had segregated the races and favored whites.“The federal government must reckon with and acknowledge the role that it has played in stripping wealth and opportunity from Black communities,” he said, while pledging to invest in Black communities and businesses with government programs, including a massive planned infrastructure package as the US builds back from the coronavirus pandemic.“We honor the legacy of the Greenwood community, and of Black Wall Street, by reaffirming our commitment to advance racial justice through the whole of our government, and working to root out systemic racism from our laws, our policies, and our hearts,” he said.Events related to the massacre commemoration ahead of the 100 year anniversary have already begun.Hundreds gathered on Monday for an interfaith service dedicating a prayer wall outside historic Vernon African Methodist Episcopal Church in Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood on the centennial of the first day of one of the deadliest racist massacres in the nation.National civil rights leaders, including the Revs Jesse Jackson and William Barber, joined multiple local faith leaders offering prayers and remarks outside the church that was largely destroyed during the massacre.Barber, a civil and economic rights activist, said he was “humbled even to stand on this holy ground”.“You can kill the people but you cannot kill the voice of the blood.”Although the church was nearly destroyed in the massacre, parishioners continued to meet in the basement, and it was rebuilt several years later, becoming a symbol of the resilience of Tulsa’s Black community. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2018.As the ceremony came to an end, participants put their hands on the prayer wall along the side of the sanctuary while a soloist sung Lift Every Voice and Sing. Traffic hummed on a nearby interstate that cuts through the Greenwood district, which was rebuilt after the massacre but slowly deteriorated 50 years later after homes were taken by eminent domain as part of urban renewal in the 1970s..The commemoration is slated to include a visit by Biden on Tuesday and the unveiling of the $20m Greenwood Rising museum. More

Joe Biden warned in a speech commemorating the US’s war dead on Memorial Day that American democracy was ‘in peril’ and called for empathy among his fellow citizens.
Speaking at Arlington National Cemetery, the president, joined by the first lady, Jill Biden, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, and her husband, paid tribute to America’s war dead

Biden warns US democracy ‘in peril’ as he commemorates America’s war dead More

Joe Biden warned in a speech commemorating America’s war dead on Memorial Day that US democracy was “in peril” and called for empathy among his fellow citizens.Speaking at Arlington National Cemetery, the US president, joined by first lady Jill Biden, Vice-President Kamala Harris and her husband, paid tribute to America’s war dead whom he described as making the ultimate sacrifice in the pursuit of democracy.But he added that US democracy was itself in danger. “The mission falls to each of us, each and every day. Democracy itself is in peril, here at home and around the world,” he said, adding: “What we do now, how we honor the memory of the fallen, will determine whether democracy will long endure.”Biden’s speech played out against a tumultuous time in American politics, which have been shaken by four years of erratic and norm-shattering rule by Donald Trump which culminated in the 6 January attack on the Capitol in Washington DC by a Trump-supporting mob seeking to disrupt the formalization of Biden’s electoral win.It also comes at a time of civic unrest sparked by largely rightwing protests against shutdowns caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the spread of conspiracy theories around election fairness stoked by Trump and the far right and widespread demonstrations against racism and police brutality.Biden centered his speech on the ideals of a democracy that thrives when citizens can vote, when there is a free press and when there are equal rights for all.“This nation was built on an idea,” Biden said in his address. “We were built on an idea, the idea of liberty and opportunity for all. We’ve never fully realized that aspiration of our founders, but every generation has opened the door a little wider.”Since he beat Trump to the White House last year Trump and many other Republicans have sought to baselessly portray the election as having been somehow fraudulent. They have launched scores of court cases and even a so-called “audit” of the results in in Arizona’s largest county.Republican state legislatures have also passed local voting laws aimed at restricting voting access that civil rights advocates say are aimed at communities of color. On Sunday night Texas Republicans failed to push through one of the most restrictive voting measures in the US after Democrats walked out of the state House at the last minute. But other measures have passed in states like Georgia and Florida.While politicians from both sides of the US political spectrum routinely speak of a “battle for the soul of America” to describe their mission to voters, Biden’s holiday address came as Trump’s former national security adviser Lt Gen Michael Flynn also said over the weekend that a Myanmar-like coup “should happen” in the US.Appearing before a conference of the QAnon conspiracy movement in Dallas, Flynn was asked by an attendee if what was happening in Myanmar – in which the military overthrew a democratically elected government – could be repeated at home.“There’s no reason,” Flynn told a cheering audience. “I mean, it should happen – that’s right.”Since Myanmar’s military seized power in February, and detained the country’s democratically elected leaders, at least 800 civilians have died and thousands have been arrested.Flynn was fired by Trump in 2017 after it was revealed that he had lied to Vice-President Mike Pence over contacts with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak.He later pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI, then withdraw his plea and the justice department dropped charges against him. Trump later pardoned the general. In January, Twitter banned Flynn from its platform in a purge of accounts promoting QAnon theories. More

Gun sales, which spiked sharply during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, have continued to increase in the United States, with first-time buyers making up more than one-fifth of Americans who purchased guns.The development will frustrate and disappoint gun control advocates who point out the huge number of firearms already circulating in American society as well as a seemingly never-ending cycle of mass shootings.A study by the General Social Survey, a public opinion poll conducted by a research center at the University of Chicago, 39% of American households own guns, up from 32% in 2016.Separately, research data compiled by the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), background checks that topped 1m a week in March 2020 – the highest since the government began tracking them in 1998 – and continued, with one week in April this year recording a record 1.2m checks. Background checks are seen as a reliable metric to track gun sales.A third data study, compiled by Northeastern University and the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and seen by the New York Times, shows that 6.5% of US adults, or 17 million people, have purchased guns in the past year, up from 5.3% in 2019.Of those, almost one fifth who bought guns last year were first-time gun owners of whom half were women, a fifth were Black and a fifth were Hispanic, challenging the stereotype of white male gun owners building personal arsenals. In 2021, gun owners overall were 63% male, 73% were white, 10% were Black and 12% Hispanic.Separately, The Trace, a non-partisan group that tracks guns sales, estimates 2.3m guns were purchased in January alone. Sales, which had remained largely flat for the duration of the Trump presidency, jumped 64% in 2020, the group said.Still, the increases are relatively small compared to the 400m guns estimated to already be in circulation, including at least 4m AR-15s, commonly described as assault rifles.“Americans are in an arms race with themselves,” South Los Angeles city council representative Marqueece Harris-Dawson told the New York Times. “There was just as much a run on guns as on toilet paper in the beginning of the pandemic.”Increased gun sales comes as Texas this month became the 20th state to pass legislation that no longer requires a permit to carry a concealed handgun. At the same time, a rash of mass-shootings, often involving AR-15 weapons have dominated headlines.According to the Gun Violence Archive, 67 mass shootings have taken place in May of this year. The most recent occurred on Sunday when a gunman opened fire in Miami, killing two people and injuring 20 others. Authorities in Texas said on Monday they had arrested a man accused of plotting to carry out a mass shooting at a Walmart, and a search of the suspect’s home turned up firearms, ammunition and materials officials described as “radical ideology paraphernalia”.Still, researchers are wary of connecting increased gun ownership with gun violence. The FBI reported a 25% rise in homicides last year that has continued into this with an 18% increase over the first three months of 2021 across 37 cities, including rises of 36% in Los Angeles and 23% in New York.But criminologist Richard Rosenfeld at the University of Missouri told the New York Times that the focus on gun numbers is misplaced. “The critical issue is not simply the increase in the supply of guns but in the nature of the weaponry that’s being used in violent crime, and that has really changed,” he said. More