US Politics

Odds are that the erstwhile Republican party comrades of Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming will soon vote to purge her from the ranks of their leadership. Cheney, who occupies the third-highest position in the House Republican Conference and is the daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney, survived a similar removal effort in early February, after she was one of only 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach former president Donald Trump. At the time, House Republicans decided to retain Cheney as conference chair by a 145-61 margin, while the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, told reporters that “Liz has a right to vote her conscience.”But that was three months ago, when even Republican leaders like McCarthy and Senator Mitch McConnell acknowledged that Trump was “practically and morally responsible” (in McConnell’s words) for provoking the mob that stormed the Capitol on 6 Januaryin an attempt to overturn the election. Since then, however, the Republican base has continued to uphold Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen from him and have pushed to remove any party officeholders who say otherwise. A recent CNN poll confirmed that 70% of Republicans say Biden did not win enough votes to be president and half believe (without evidence) that solid proof of Trump’s victory exists.So congressional Republicans, always reluctant to stand up against Trump and his supporters, are edging toward the view that Cheney must go. Her crime, as they see it, is that unlike McConnell and McCarthy she did not fall silent about Trump in the aftermath of impeachment and publicly declared that she would not support him if he were to run for the presidency again in 2024. As Trump has howled for Cheney’s political demise, internal Republican criticism of her has mounted. McCarthy has openly withdrawn his support for her. She has responded with a defiant op-ed in the Washington Post calling on Republicans to “steer away from the dangerous and anti-democratic Trump cult of personality” and support the creation of a bipartisan, fact-finding commission to investigate the 6 January attack on the Capitol.Republican critics of Cheney aren’t wrong, exactly, when they say she’s being divisive. Focusing on the Biden administration’s overreach, rather than waging an intra-party debate over Trump, would give the Republican party a better chance of retaking the House majority in 2022.But unity on those terms would amount to putting party over country in the worst possible way. Cheney was absolutely correct when she told the former House speaker Paul Ryan, at a recent conservative conference, that Republicans can’t embrace the view that the election was stolen: “It’s a poison in the bloodstream of our democracy. We can’t whitewash what happened on January 6 or perpetuate Trump’s Big Lie … What he did on January 6 is a line that cannot be crossed.”Republican hopes that this anti-democratic movement within their ranks can be ignored or will somehow go away are futileTrump’s fraudulent claim of a stolen election, and his continuing efforts to undermine the legitimacy of his successor, is an intense and very real danger to American democracy. In the recent observation of Michael Gerson, the former chief speechwriter for ex-president George W Bush, “the lie of a stolen election is the foundational falsehood of a political worldview”, one that makes facts and evidence irrelevant and encourages “distrust of every source of social authority opposed to the leader’s shifting will”.Republican hopes that this anti-democratic movement within their ranks can be ignored or will somehow go away are futile. It will have to be confronted sooner or later, and the plausible outcomes become more ominous the longer the confrontation is deferred. If Cheney’s Republican colleagues resent that her resolve makes them look like cowards by contrast, voting to retain her in her leadership post would be a small step in the direction of integrity.Even Republicans who prefer to place party over country should consider that under these circumstances purging Cheney inevitably will amount to choosing Trump and his lies over what Cheney called “critical elements of our constitutional structure that make democracy work – confidence in the result of elections and the rule of law”. How will that look to the college-educated middle-class voters whose revulsion from Trump in 2018 and 2020 gave Democrats control of both houses of Congress and the White House? For that matter, how will defenestrating the sole woman in the party’s congressional leadership help Republicans shore up their declining support among female voters?Many Democrats in the grip of their own version of party-over-country consider Cheney’s likely downfall a form of karmic retribution. It’s true that Liz Cheney is as deeply conservative as her father, the former vice-president under George W Bush. It’s also true that both Cheneys, in different ways, played a role in marginalizing the Republican party’s once-robust moderate wing, and that the party’s resulting monolithic ideological rigidity made it ripe for Trump’s authoritarian-populist takeover.But in this moment of national crisis, the critical factor on which a politician must be judged is his or her commitment to liberal democracy. It’s irrelevant that the leading candidate to replace Cheney as conference chair, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, once had a reputation for moderation and bipartisanship. She now endorses Trump’s massive lie of a stolen election, and that negates anything else she has ever stood for. I hope that Americans from both sides of our widening partisan divide who share a common interest in preserving democracy can come to see the necessity of uniting around that principle, at least, before it’s too late.
Geoffrey Kabaservice is the director of political studies at the Niskanen Center in Washington, as well as the author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party More

There could have been no more fitting venue for the bellicose US congressman Matt Gaetz to launch his nationwide “America first” speaking tour than The Villages. Where better to perpetuate the fantasy that all is going well for a politician seen as the “ultimate Maga bro” than Florida’s ultra-conservative “Disney World for retirees”?The Republican loyalists who filled the ballroom of the Brownwood hotel and spa on Friday night didn’t come to hear whether the embattled Gaetz ever paid a 17-year-old minor for sex, took sleazy sex-trafficking trips to the Bahamas or assisted in his disgraced former “wingman” Joel Greenberg’s efforts to install cronies in well-paid positions of political power.But the scandal now engulfing Gaetz is truly one of the most remarkable, sleazy and tabloid-ready in recent American politics. Away from all the Donald Trump cheerleading by Gaetz and his fellow rightwing fire-starter Marjorie Taylor Greene during their national tour of distraction, it is hard to escape the notion that the walls are closing in.Much of the focus is on a justice department inquiry into the 39-year-old Florida congressman that, in recent days, is reported to have grown beyond initial sex trafficking allegations to an inquiry involving alleged corruption.According to the Associated Press, federal investigators are now looking into Gaetz’s connections with medical marijuana, and whether certain friends and associates with interests in the nascent yet lucrative industry in Florida influenced or enriched themselves from legislation the politician was sponsoring.Neither Gaetz or the justice department responded to requests for comment, and the FBI has previously told the Guardian that it “declines to confirm nor deny the existence or status of an investigation”.But it is the salacious side of the allegations, and his friendship with Greenberg, the former Seminole county tax collector now in jail on 33 federal charges from stalking to sex trafficking a child, which have garnered most attention.Gaetz, who represents a large swath of Florida’s panhandle, has tried to distance himself from Greenberg, despite an avalanche of evidence that the pair were close. It includes tweets showing the two friends with Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis; receipts of Venmo payments from Gaetz to Greenberg in the same amount that Greenberg then immediately paid to a teenage girl; and a “creepy” voicemail the pair sent in 2019 to Anna Eskamani, a young Democratic state congresswoman.Perhaps the most damning development came a week ago when the Daily Beast published a stunning “confession” letter it said was written by Greenberg to Roger Stone, a close ally and political “fixer” of Trump, allegedly seeking a pardon from the then president in exchange for $250,000.Notably, it implicated Gaetz directly in paying numerous women for sex, including a girl who was 17 at the time and who is now said to be a sex industry worker. “My lawyers, that I fired, know the whole story about MG’s involvement,” Greenberg allegedly wrote in one text to Stone, according to the Beast.“They know he paid me to pay the girls and that he and I both had sex with the girl who was underage.”Stone acknowledged to the Beast that Greenberg had tried to hire him to secure a pardon from Trump, but denied seeking or receiving payment for his assistance.Gaetz, meanwhile, has always insisted the claim he had a relationship with a minor is “verifiably false”. In a bizarre, freewheeling appearance on Fox News in March, the same day the New York Times first reported the existence of the federal inquiry, Gaetz claimed he was himself the victim of an $25m extortion plot involving a justice department official.He also attempted to draw the Fox host, Tucker Carlson, into the scandal by claiming that Carlson and his wife had been to dinner with Gaetz and a female friend whom he said was later “threatened by the FBI”.A surprised Carlson said he did not recall meeting the mystery woman, and subsequently called it “one of the weirdest interviews I’ve ever conducted”.Prosecutors, meanwhile, have a 15 May deadline to strike a plea deal with Greenberg, set by US district court judge Gregory Presnell in April. Greenberg’s attorney Fritz Scheller said after the hearing that his client was cooperating, telling reporters: “I am sure Matt Gaetz is not feeling very comfortable today.”Outwardly, Gaetz has remained defiant, ignoring some calls from within his own party to resign while still enjoying the support of Republican leadership. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, has said he will not take any action unless charges are filed.But the scandal has caused two Gaetz aides to resign, and political opponents in Florida have stepped up their criticism as the Greenberg plea deal deadline approaches.Eskamani said she went public with the voicemail partly to expose the “bro culture” in Tallahassee politics within which, she said, Gaetz and Greenberg flourished.“Political institutions as a whole are very male-dominated, there’s a sense of privilege and often those in public office come from a family lineage or wealth or establishment,” she said. “It’s hard to get in if you don’t come from those experiences.“It’s not like Matt Gaetz created bro culture, but he absolutely benefited from it, exploited it and is being protected by it today. It’s slimy characters, tons of money, inappropriate use of power when it comes to lavish trips, and the use of sex and drugs to also exhibit your power. It’s just gross all around.”She added: “[But] there is no doubt in my mind that there will be charges he will face. I think it’s going to take time for the DoJ to build that case, but I feel confident there will be consequences for his behavior.” More

Three years ago Alejandra Juarez fell victim to Donald Trump’s cruelty as the wife of a decorated US Marine Corps veteran and mother of two young US citizen daughters was deported to Mexico under the former president’s zero-tolerance immigration policies.On Saturday Juarez will rejoin her family in Florida as one of the first beneficiaries of a humanitarian program set up by Joe Biden’s administration to reunify parents Trump separated from their children.But while Juarez’s Mother’s Day weekend reunion with daughters Pamela, 19, Estela, 11, and husband Temo will close a lengthy, painful journey of isolation and depression, she sees it as a door opening for other families torn apart by deportation.“I’m happy this is behind me and my family, and hoping this will lead to a permanent solution not only for military spouses like myself, but for everyone,” she told the Guardian from Mérida, Mexico, where she has been living since being forced from her home in Davenport, Florida, in 2018.“I hope it will have a domino effect and bring many more people back.”The Biden administration’s family reunification taskforce was set up by the new president’s executive order in February and began returning some of those “unjustly separated at the US-Mexico border” during the Trump era this week by granting them “humanitarian parole”.The numbers, however, are uncertain. The homeland security department (DHS) taskforce has been working to identify cases, but admits finding them all will be a lengthy process. It is scheduled to deliver its first report on 2 June.Also unclear is how many military families were affected by what Biden has called the “human tragedy” of separations during the four years Trump was in office. Federal agencies do not record military service in immigration cases, but a 2018 report by the advocacy group American Families United estimated that up to 11,800 active service men and women, all US citizens or permanent residents, had a spouse vulnerable to deportation.Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary who is also the taskforce’s chair, said this week’s first wave of reunifications was “just the beginning”.“Many more will follow, and we recognize the importance of providing these families with the stability and resources they need to heal,” he said, noting the taskforce was “exploring options” for long-term legal stability for reunified families.Juarez, 41, and her 43-year-old husband Cuauhtemoc, known as Temo, were both born in Mexico. But while he came to the US legally as a child and was naturalized in 2002, shortly before a 16-month deployment in Iraq, she spent the 18 years of their marriage until her deportation undocumented.As a teenager she was caught crossing the border illegally and chose to sign a document in English she said she didn’t understand and return to Mexico voluntarily instead of being placed in detention. The document permanently forfeited her right to legal status, which she did not discover until after her marriage.She returned to the US and lived anonymously in Florida with her husband until a traffic stop in 2013 exposed her undocumented status. Even then, under the more relaxed policies of Barack Obama’s administration, she was allowed to stay with twice-yearly check-ins with immigration authorities.Juarez self-deported in 2018 after Trump implemented his no-tolerance approach, and before authorities could enforce a removal order issued against her. She rented an apartment in Mexico with Estela while her husband remained in Florida to run his roofing business and allow Pamela to finish high school, but with money running out and two households to run, visits to Mexico became less frequent.When the coronavirus pandemic struck, Juarez said, her jobs teaching English slowed up and Estela returned to Florida. The knowledge her daughters were growing up without their mother, she said, caused her depression for which she needed therapy.Darren Soto, a Florida Democratic US congressman, lobbied the White House for Juarez to be allowed to return, and has introduced the Protect Patriot Spouses Act to Congress to protect military families from deportations.“President Trump’s administration was an aberration in American history with regard to immigration. Now we have humanitarian considerations, which are American values, reincorporated into our federal government,” said Soto, who also backs the American Families United Act that would allow some undocumented immigrants with US citizen family members to stay.“It’s been a long time coming, but Alejandra never gave up on us and we never gave up on her. They’ve missed almost three years of cherished memories together and it’s been traumatic for all of them.”Juarez said she was grateful for the efforts of Soto, her immigration lawyers and daughter Estela, who was one of her mother’s biggest cheerleaders. The 11-year-old excoriated Trump at last year’s Democratic national convention, reading a letter in which she told him: “You tore our world apart.”In January, she appealed for Biden’s help in an emotional video in which she likened her father’s military service to that of the new president’s late son Beau. Estela, Juarez said, is documenting the family’s story in a forthcoming book titled Until Someone Listens.For now, Juarez said, her intention is making up for lost time.“They need my cooking and they already told me what they want for breakfast on Sunday, so I’ll go grocery shopping like I always did, make breakfast for all of them and go to church like we used to,” she said. “I just want to enjoy my house and my family again.” More

She is a champion of the hawkish foreign policy espoused by her father, a former US vice-president dubbed “Darth Vader”. She is a hardline conservative whose opposition to gay marriage pained her lesbian sister.Now Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney finds herself a likely martyr of the resistance to ex-president Donald Trump, earning plaudits from party moderates and even some Democrats for swearing allegiance to truth rather than lies.Cheney appears all but certain next week to lose her status as the sole woman in Republican leadership in the House of Representatives. Members have been lining up to express a lack of confidence in her and instead tout Elise Stefanik, a pro-Trump congresswoman, as her successor.Cheney’s cardinal sin is to reject Trump’s “big lie” that last year’s election was stolen from him, increasingly the definitive loyalty test within the party. On the contrary, she has spoken out in public, tweeted that the false claim is “poisoning our democratic system” and even published a newspaper column urging colleagues to spurn the “Trump cult of personality”.The former president has fired back, branding her a “warmonger” and throwing his weight behind Stefanik. Future historians may regard it as a fork in the road for Republicans: a choice between a conspiratorial demagogue and a return to conservatism, institutionalism and fact-based reality. It seems clear that Cheney will lose, much to the despair of admiring “Never Trumpers”.“I think that there should be a line of Republicans around the block standing up to defend her,” Michael Wood, who won just 3% of the vote in a Republican primary in Texas earlier this month, told the MSNBC network. “This is probably the bravest woman in the western hemisphere.“She’s a modern-day Margaret Thatcher, an iron lady, and she’s being stabbed in the back not over policy differences; she’s being stabbed in the back because she won’t lie. It’s horrible what’s happening and I don’t know if I want to be in a party that doesn’t want somebody in it who’s speaking the truth.”Cheney, 54, is now the face of a Republican establishment that became a target of Trump’s wrecking ball populism but also has few friends on the left. She served at the state department, practised law at the International Finance Corporation and co-wrote a book with her father Dick Cheney, entitled Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America, that defended the George W Bush administration’s approval of the use of torture.In 2013, running for the US Senate in Wyoming, Cheney told Fox News that she believed “in the traditional definition of marriage” and disagreed on the issue with her sister, Mary, who is married to a woman. Mary responded on Facebook: “Liz – this isn’t just an issue on which we disagree – you’re just wrong – and on the wrong side of history.”In 2016 Cheney won election to Congress, serving as Wyoming’s lone member in the House, and soon became chair of the House Republican Conference, making her the No 3 Republican in the chamber. She survived an initial challenge earlier this year after she was among just 10 House Republicans to back Trump’s impeachment for inciting supporters to storm the US Capitol on 6 January.But this time she has few public backers for a vote that could come as early as Wednesday. She has decided instead to go down with all guns blazing. In an opinion column in the Washington Post this week, Cheney insisted that she would defend basic principles irrespective of the short-term political price.She wrote: “I am a conservative Republican, and the most conservative of conservative values is reverence for the rule of law. The question before us now is whether we will join Trump’s crusade to delegitimize and undo the legal outcome of the 2020 election, with all the consequences that might have.”Her stand has coincided with a recent book tour by her father’s old boss, Bush, in which he warned that the Trump-era Republican party has become “isolationist, protectionist and, to a certain extent, nativist”. Dick Cheney himself, now 80, has kept a relatively low profile since leaving office but is likely to be proud of his daughter’s position.Jake Bernstein, co-author of the book Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency, said: “I think part of the reason for why Liz Cheney is doing what she’s doing is directly the result of her father in the sense that her father was the very embodiment of the Republican establishment for decades.“Whether you agreed or disagreed, they did have principles and an ideology and I think they are probably appalled that the Republican party has become a cult of Donald Trump. I assume that she’s in constant contact with her father and that she would stand up for that Republican party that’s been swept away in the age of Trump.”It is rare for Liz Cheney and liberals to find themselves on the same side of any argument, Bernstein acknowledged. “She’s still very conservative. She would never see eye to eye with Democrats on anything else but a belief in the institution of Congress and the democratic process. To believe that she is in any way a moderate politically says more about what Donald Trump has done to the Republican party than it does about her.”The author and journalist added: “One of the biggest recalibrations that is needed in American political discourse is that most of these Republicans are not conservatives: they don’t want to maintain conservative traditions, they don’t have a conservative ideology. They’re radical in their approach and to call them conservative is a misnomer. Liz Cheney is a true conservative in every sense of the word and she’s only a moderate in relation to the radicalism that has seized the Republican party.”The effort to purge Cheney is seen by critics as one of the most striking examples yet of Republicans’ shift away from focusing on a program of government in favor of dancing to Trump’s tune. Instead of policy, loyalty to Trump and “culture wars” are now the glue that hold the party together.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “The thing that’s hard to remember is Cheney is an arch-conservative. She’s a hard-edged, small government, lower taxes figure and a leading voice on national defense but the Republican party is no longer organized along the axis of ideology; it’s organized along the axis of cult of personality.“This is a low point for the Republican party. It’s embarrassing and really gives you a sense of how unmoored it is from the issues facing the country.”Cheney appears to be a victim of Republicans’ strategy for winning back the House in next year’s midterm elections, which often hinge on a party’s most fervent supporters. Trump is still hugely popular with the grassroots and is seen as critical for both mobilizing voter enthusiasm and fundraising. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, appears to be betting on Trump to win him the speakership, even if it means legitimizing “the big lie”.In such a context, Cheney might have felt that she had nothing to lose by nailing her colors to the mast now. Tim Miller, writer-at-large at the Bulwark website and former political director of Republican Voters Against Trump, said: “Say what you want about the Cheneys, I think that she has a deep, genuine respect for our democratic system and is genuinely outraged by the president’s actions after the election.” More

Montana’s governor has signed a bill that bans transgender athletes from competing on school and university sports teams that correspond with their gender.Greg Gianforte’s signing on Friday makes Montana the latest Republican-controlled state to approve such legislation.Conservative lawmakers in state capitols across the US have proposed more than 80 laws this year targeting trans people, the majority of them seeking to ban trans children from certain sports teams or limit youth access to gender affirming health care.Supporters of the sports bills have said that they will ensure the playing field in girls’ sports remains fair. But there is no research suggesting that trans girls have an unfair advantage in school sports.When the Associated Press recently contacted lawmakers behind the proposed bans, most couldn’t cite a single local example of a trans girl playing sports. Some pointed to a Connecticut case in which cisgender girls’ families sued, alleging that two trans female sprinters had an unfair advantage. But two days after that lawsuit was filed, one of the cis girls beat her trans competitor in a state championship race.“If you look at the legislature’s justification for advancing the transgender sports ban, they could cite not one instance where transgender participation in athletics has been a problem or caused conflict,” said Alex Rate, legal director of ACLU of Montana.Rate called the Montana law “patently unconstitutional”.The bill had received widespread opposition from business leaders, physicians, athletes, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. “This bill unfairly targets trans youth and puts millions of federal education dollars at risk. It is an unnecessary and harmful policy that comes at a massive cost to the state,” said Shawn Reagor, director of equality and economic justice with the Montana Human Rights Network.Gianforte said last week that he had met with transgender people and athletes while considering whether to sign the bill.Lawmakers in more than 20 states have considered similar sports bans, and they have become law in Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia. Idaho’s law was blocked by a court ruling last year. Governors in North Dakota and Kansas have vetoed similar measures.So far, sixteen anti-LGBTQ+ legislative proposals have been enacted this year, the highest-ever number of such bills signed into law in a single year, the Human Rights Campaign said on Friday. Eight of the laws specifically target trans people.Trans youth athletes have increasingly spoken out about the proposed bans in their states, with one 12-year-old girl in Utah, who is trans and a swimmer, recently telling the Guardian, “It’s a piece of your life that you work so hard for, and for it just to be taken away is hard. It just seems that [the lawmakers] only care about what’s in my pants and not about all the stuff I can bring to the team and all my hard work.”Trans youth represent just a fraction of the US population – recent estimates suggest they make up roughly 2% of youth.Montana’s Republican-controlled Legislature approved the measure last month, after it was amended to become void if the federal government withholds education funding from the state over gender discrimination and an appeal by the state fails.Joe Biden signed an executive order his first day in office banning discrimination based on gender, raising concern among officials in the Montana university system that $350m in education funding could be on the line if the measure is signed into law.A spokesperson for Gianforte did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

Texas Republicans passed their bill restricting voting rights on Friday afternoon, after cutting a deal with Democrats in backroom negotiations overnight.“Nobody deserves to wake up and find out that their rights have been further restricted. But time and time again during this legislative session, that’s what Texans have experienced,” said Wesley Story, communications manager for Progress Texas, a rapid response media organization for progressive messaging.The Texas house of representatives voted 78-64 to give Senate Bill 7 (SB7) final approval, setting up an opportunity for the Republican-controlled legislature to create a Frankenstein of voting restrictions behind closed doors.“This is really one of the last straws of … this nonstop attack – on communities of color, on immigrant communities, on communities that just don’t have as much of a voice – to try to prevent them from speaking out,” said Gene Wu, a state representative.“We’re just tired of our districts being told that they’re second-class citizens.”Armed with more than 100 amendments, opponents of Senate Bill 7 tore into the legislation on Thursday evening. Their long-winded debate was intended “to drive home the point and to really emphasize that there is no reason for this legislation”, Wu said.In response, the state house approved a series of amendments addressing some of SB7’s most controversial provisions. Those amendments, in part, target the bill’s severe criminal penalties, along with concerns over emboldening partisan poll watchers.The legislation will now probably go to a conference committee, where both legislative chambers can reconcile differences in the versions they passed.Because of maneuvering by the house, lawmakers will be able to pull language from both the senate’s version of SB7 and HB6 – Texas’s two most high-profile restrictive voting bills this cycle – during those negotiations.SB7 and HB6 were designed as sweeping reforms to Texas’s electoral apparatus, targeting innovations such as the proactive distribution of vote-by-mail applications, late-night voting hours and drive-through voting that became flashpoints during last year’s election.“At the end of the day, these bills discourage participation in the democratic process, and their overall goal is to keep voters from the polls,” Story said.“And we know that specifically people of color, folks with disabilities – those are the types of voters that are going to be impacted the most because of many of the restrictions that we’ve seen, that are staying within the bill.”Texas’s leaders have been pushing voting restrictions for months under the guise of “election integrity”, after many Texans were convinced by the “big lie” that widespread election fraud stole the 2020 presidential contest.Their opponents believe that Republicans – who, as of now, hold largely unchecked control over state government – are trying to pre-empt changing demographics that could eventually boot them from office.“This is the governor’s priority. This is the lieutenant governor’s priority. This is the speaker’s priority. This is the Republican party of Texas’s priority,” Wu said.“Whether they’re public about it or not, in the back hallways, this is their most important piece of legislation – because they need this to stay in power.” More

The mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, who was seen as a possible running mate for Joe Biden in last year’s presidential election, said late on Thursday she will not seek a second term in office.Bottoms, 51, who was elected mayor in 2017 and is just the second Black woman to lead the city, did not provide a specific reason for her decision and did not say what she would do next, when she announced the surprise news.“It is with deep emotions that I hold my head high, and choose not to seek another term as Mayor,” Bottoms wrote on Twitter.In a morning press conference on Friday, Bottoms, visibly tearful, cited challenges during her tenure including a March 2018 cyber-attack on the city during the early months of her term; social justice protests after the murder of George Floyd, where police aggressively clashed with demonstrators; and being mayor during the administration of Donald Trump, whom she described as “the madman in the White House”.Bottoms was clear that family reasons were not behind her decision to step down. She also said she would not be accepting a position at Walgreens after her term is finished, addressing rumors that she would be working with her close friend and Walgreens chief executive, Roz Brewer.Bottoms also said that her decision was not because of doubts that she could win a second term in office. As Bottoms stated, polling numbers show that if a mayoral election was held today, she would win the race without a runoff.“I don’t know what’s next for me personally and for my family. But what I do know is that this is a decision made from a position of strength, not weakness, said Bottoms.Bottoms had previously been fundraising money for her re-election efforts, including hosting a virtual fundraiser with Joe Biden, and now donations will be returned, she said.She said in her letter to social media that the decision came “as [my husband] Derek and I have given thoughtful prayer and consideration to the season now before us”.“Multiple credible polls have shown that if the race for Mayor were held today, I would be re-elected,” read the statement.It also listed a number of Bottoms’ achievements in office, including ending Atlanta’s contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) that placed detainees in the Atlanta city jail; helping to elect Joe Biden as president and Kamala Harris as vice-president; and the Democratic victories of the US senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossof in Georgia.Bottoms’ sudden reversal on re-election is surprising, given her growing popularity in the Democratic party.Bottoms was an early endorser of Biden and played a crucial role in promoting his 2020 campaign.She was also offered a cabinet position under Biden, one she turned down last December, citing her mayoral responsibilities in Atlanta.Bottoms now said that if she had known of someone at the time who “could step up” and be the mayor of Atlanta, she “likely would have made another decision” when she was offered the cabinet position.“I wanted to finish what I started and I didn’t see who could step in and lead this city,” she said.Apart from the crises of Covid-19, a cyber-attack and police killings,Atlanta was scored with an increase in violence last year. In addition to a record number of homicides, the most since 1996, as reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, eight people, the majority of Asian descent, were killed in a mass shooting at two area spas.Bottoms had publicly stated that she believed race played a role in the shooting suspect’s motive.Bottoms had made national headlines after being sued by Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, for ordering a face mask mandate for Atlanta, publicly calling the governor’s leadership “irresponsible”.The mayor’s handling of Brooks’s death has been met with criticism, especially following the reinstatement of officer Garrett Rolfe this week, who shot Brooks, after a review board found the city had not followed its own disciplinary procedures.Now there will be fevered speculation about who will run the largest city in Georgia, including another go for two-term past mayor Kasim Reed. More