US Politics

A few days after the insurrection at the Capitol, my father Jack started sending emails from his Lincoln, Kansas, home to his representative and senators in Congress. For some reason, he was also cc-ing me on these exchanges.There was a new email almost every day, and the tone swung between pleading, angry, bewildered and frustrated. There were emails asking his senators to vote to impeach Trump, emails demanding proof supporting the allegations that the election had been stolen, emails trying to untangle their twisted logic.One such email read, in part: “Your actions, and the actions of other Republicans like you, are destroying the Republican party. As I have been a lifelong Republican, I hate what has happened to the party of Lincoln and Reagan and the ideals of the past, to see it reduced to a personality cult.”The politicians’ responses made it absolutely clear no one was taking my father’s criticisms seriously. Kansas representative Tracey Mann sent a form letter response, saying “we must unify as a nation”, which presumably meant moving on, forgetting the extravagant misdeeds of the Trump administration and voting against impeachment. When I asked my father if he had any expectation that his representatives would take responsibility for their involvement in the insurrection (Kansas junior senator Roger Marshall joined with those who claimed there was fraud during the election), he said, “No. Well … no.”My father’s frustration with the Republican party had been building for years, but something seemed to break with him after the insurrection. The riot at the Capitol was, he believed, stoked by unscrupulous politicians who for four years cared more about power than rule of law and who, when that power slipped, would rather let the country continue to fall apart than work to rebuild.The Republican party is in the midst of an identity crisis, brought on by a big shift in voting demographics and a new generation of more radical and paranoid politicians. As Democrats move away from their historically working-class constituency to become instead the party of the urban, college-educated liberal, Republicans find themselves attracting the loyalty of the religious, those not formally educated and the rural. The institutions which previously cultivated Republican voters – the university system and white-collar employment – now lead Americans to the political left, leaving conservative leaders and thinktanks scrambling to figure out how to accommodate their new, more blue-collar base. Many Republican politicians clearly find it easier to appeal to their base’s fears and resentments than to provide working-class Americans with stability and resources. This has led to some strange pageantry, like the Yale Law graduate and Missouri Republican senator Josh Hawley cosplaying as a man-of-the-people populist.The Bulwark podcast, which is one of the few conservative media outlets my father still listens to, and which prides itself on its “civil” discourse, has been monitoring this identity crisis daily. In its episode “Post-Impeachment GOP”, host Charlie Sykes described the slow decline that seemed to accelerate once Republican voters believed the lie that the Trump’s re-election had been stolen and their politicians refused to deny or disavow it. “The Republican party has been willing to look the other way over lies, racism, all the corruption and xenophobia, but now it’s willing to look the other way [on] violence, extremism and anti-democratic authoritarianism.”My father Jack likens his estrangement from the Republican party to the rise of the recently deceased Rush Limbaugh. He had listened to him in the 80s for about a year, at first finding funny his jokes about the hypocrisy of Democrats. But soon Rush’s tone changed. “He had been saying outrageous things about people and then laughing – but then he started to sound like he was really believing it. He wasn’t entertaining any more; he was vicious.” He was further turned off from Limbaugh, who exploded in popularity during the Clinton administration, by his reliance on cheap misogynist and homophobic jokes.The Republican party as a whole was going down a similar path – choosing culture war battles over ideological integrity, and warmongering over supporting the institutions of family, religious freedom, strong communities, and small business the party professed to value. This was particularly visible in the politics of our home state of Kansas, which is often portrayed as hardline conservative, but whose local politics are far more nuanced than outsiders perceive. It’s worth remembering that the state has a strong local Democratic party, a history of far-left progressive politics, and that the current governor is Democrat Laura Kelly.But back in 2011, Sam Brownback was elected governor and decided to make the most radical tax slashes the state had ever seen. This decimated the budgets of hospitals, schools, and other agencies, and they began to fall apart. Politicians ran against Brownback promising to raise taxes, something almost unheard of. The “Kansas experiment”, as it was called, revealed the emptiness of Republican rhetoric and their lack of new ideas beyond “cut taxes”.He was further turned off from Limbaugh by his reliance on cheap misogynist and homophobic jokesClearly my father is not the only conservative feeling estranged from the Republican party. Gerald Russello, editor of the conservative cultural journal the University Bookman, echoed the feeling. “The political conservatives you see on TV or in Congress are either Trump clowns or Reagan-era old guys who believe the free market solves everything,” he told me recently. “Who speaks for me? I can’t associate myself with clownish racists.”It’s not yet clear how extensive the fallout from Trumpism will be, but a larger number of Republicans are changing their official political affiliation than Democrats, and there is talk of the possibility of forming a splinter political party, called the Integrity party. (The Lincoln Project founders were involved in this idea before the organization was racked by sexual harassment accusations and larger questions about its financial and political purpose.) Building a new political party into something that can attain power and influence is a long-term goal, but it would strive to give a voice to fiscal conservatives and social moderates, occupying a center-right position, left of where the Republicans currently sit.When I asked my father if he could ever be persuaded to vote Democratic, he thought for a while. “I doubt it. I get this feeling from the Democrats of ‘We’re from the government and we’re here to help you’ that I don’t like. I want to know how can we best solve [a] problem instead of just throwing money at it.” What he considers problems – things like the national debt and overspending on military – the Democrats don’t seem to acknowledge, nor do the Republicans acknowledge what my father believes are looming disasters, like climate change and the broken healthcare system. But my father has no faith in the ideas Democrats have put forth to solve these issues.Both my father and Russello expressed frustration with Republicans claiming to be a pro-family party while allowing families to suffer on their own through a pandemic.“Give the people money!” Russello said. “It’s not socialism – that’s an argument from the 80s.” And he’s worried about the future if the party continues to abandon what should be its primary concern. “There’s a strain of conservatism with men and women in their 20s and 30s who have given up on politics. They say, you don’t know how bad things are for us.” The Republicans have little to offer them, as small towns and the middle of the country are allowed to decay into unemployment, de-industrialization and addiction, but these places are also Republicans’ strongholds.For now, change looks unlikely to come from the top. Conservatives are still intellectually reliant on thinktanks in Washington, which have been spitting out the same ideas about the free market for decades. There are writers and intellectuals on the right who are trying to plot a course forward, but they are frequently drowned out by media personalities on Fox News and alt-right podcasts. Russello pointed out that after the media was so surprised by the election of Donald Trump in 2016, many publications pledged to go into these neglected regions and give coverage to their concerns. Very little of that coverage materialized; there have been few big splashy books on so-called “Trump country” apart from, say, Strangers in Their Own Land or Hillbilly Elegy. The focus has mostly remained on the more sensational side of Trumpism, like the QAnon conspiracy and insurrectionists, and less the outlook of the average conservative voter.As for my father’s plans, he is still involved in local government, where he has served for decades now. He recently fought off an attempt by a committee to invite a Robert E Lee impersonator to the Lincoln Days festivities in honor of the town’s namesake, pointing out the general was a traitor who was lucky he wasn’t hanged. And despite the lack of results, he’s still sending those emails. Another one went out this morning. More

The US House of Representatives passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, the most ambitious police reform effort in decades. The legislation changes would ban chokeholds and ‘qualified immunity’ for law enforcement and create national standards for policing in a bid to bolster accountability. California congresswoman Karen Bass, who authored the bill, cited the beating of Rodney King in 1991 and Floyd’s death as the catalyst for the ambitious reform while House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said the bill was ‘legislation which will fundamentally transform the culture’
US House passes most ambitious police reform effort in decades More

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The US House of Representatives passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, the most ambitious police reform effort in decades, for the second time on Wednesday.
The sweeping legislation would ban chokeholds and “qualified immunity” for law enforcement and create national standards for policing in a bid to bolster accountability. Nine months after Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed by Minneapolis police, lawmakers voted to approve the reform measure named after him 220-212, along party lines. However, the only Republican who voted in favor said he did so in error, and has changed the official record to reflect his opposition.
The House had passed a version of the bill last year, but the Republican-controlled Senate never took it up. This time around, Democrats have the support of the White House and a slight edge in the Senate. But they will have to win over at least 10 Republican senators to overcome a filibuster and pass the measure – which is unlikely to happen.
The bill includes prohibitions on so-called qualified immunity, which shields law enforcement from certain lawsuits, and is one of the main provisions that will likely need to be negotiated in any compromise with Republican senators.
Police unions and other law enforcement groups have argued that, without such legal protections, fears of lawsuits will stop people from becoming police officers – even though the measure permits such suits only against law enforcement agencies, rather than all public employees.
The California congresswoman Karen Bass, who authored the bill, called provisions limiting qualified immunity and easing standards for prosecution “the only measures that hold police accountable, that will actually decrease the number of times we have to see people killed on videotape.”
She also acknowledged the challenges Democrats faced last November, and may likely see again, when former Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and other leading Republicans crowded the airwaves with images of cities around the country burning.
But Bass said those attacks, like much of the opposition to the bill, are built on racism, promoting fears about how, “the scary Black people are going to attack you if you try to rein in the police”.
“That’s as old as apple pie in our history,” she said. “So do you not act because of that?”
Still, she conceded that changes are likely to come if the measure is to win the minimum 60 votes it will need to advance in the Senate, which is now split 50-50. Bass said she had been in contact with the South Carolina senator Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the chamber, and was confident he would help deliver some GOP support.
Scott said this week that the legislation’s sticking points were qualified immunity and prosecutorial standards and that in both areas, “We have to protect individual officers.”
“That’s a red line for me,” Scott said, adding “hopefully we’ll come up with something that actually works.” More

The Republican congressman Ronny Jackson created a hostile work environment, engaged in problematic drinking and improperly distributed prescription medications during his time serving as a White House physician, a scathing Pentagon report has found.The unpublished report compiled by the defense department’s inspector general was first obtained by CNN, and includes testimony from 60 witnesses about Jackson’s behavior at work. Only 13 made positive observations, and 38 spoke about “unprofessional behavior, intimidation and poor treatment of subordinates”.The report states: “Only four witnesses told us that they did not experience, see, or hear about RDML Jackson yelling, screaming, cursing, or belittling subordinates.”Jackson, 53, a retired navy rear admiral, began working as a physician in the White House Medical Unit, which is overseen by the defense department, under the George W Bush administration. He was later appointed physician to the president by former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump until 2018. He was elected to Congress last November, representing a district in northern Texas.Jackson had been nominated by Trump to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, but withdrew after a string of allegations surfaced that included improper handling of prescription pain medications and creating a toxic work environment. Jackson denied the allegations at the time.The new report from the Pentagon watchdog found that Jackson “disparaged, belittled, bullied and humiliated” more junior colleagues, including making “sexual and denigrating” comments about a female co-worker.It said he “engaged in inappropriate conduct involving the use of alcohol” during two presidential trips – one to the Philippines in 2014 and another to Argentina in 2016 – and was known to take the drug Ambien, a powerful sleep aid, while flying on Air Force One, which contributed to concerns among colleagues over his ability to provide proper medical care to the president and others.In a statement, Jackson said the inspector general had resurrected “false allegations” because he had “refused to turn my back on President Trump”. He said he “flat out” rejected “any implication” that he consumed alcohol while on duty.“I also categorically deny any implication that I was in any way sexually inappropriate at work, outside of work, or anywhere with any member of my staff or anyone else. That is not me and what is alleged did not happen,” Jackson added.Jackson’s office noted that Obama had promoted him to rear admiral “after the alleged events” outlined in the report. More

Andrew Cuomo said on Wednesday he would not resign as New York governor following the emergence of sexual harassment allegations.Cuomo, who achieved national and global prominence because of his direct briefings last year on the Covid-19 pandemic, spoke at his first public appearance since three women accused him of misconduct, including inappropriate remarks and unwanted touching.The Democratic governor apologized and said he had “learned an important lesson” on his behaviour around women.“I now understand that I acted in a way that made people feel uncomfortable,” he said. “It was unintentional and I truly and deeply apologize for it.”Cuomo said he would “fully cooperate” with an inquiry into the accusations, which is being overseen by the state attorney general, Letitia James. The attorney general, also a Democrat, is in the process of choosing a law firm to conduct the investigation. The firm would present its findings in a public report.When the third-term governor was asked about calls for his resignation, Cuomo said: “I wasn’t elected by politicians. I was elected by the people of the state of New York. I’m not going to resign.”Cuomo discussed their claims during a press conference that otherwise concentrated on New York’s coronavirus response. Before this briefing, Cuomo last spoke with journalists during a 22 February conference call. His last on-camera briefing was on 19 February.Shortly after his remarks, one of his accusers questioned his effort to apologize.“How can New Yorkers trust you @NYGovCuomo to lead our state if you ‘don’t know’ when you’ve been inappropriate with your own staff?” said former aide Lindsey Boylan on Twitter.How can New Yorkers trust you @NYGovCuomo to lead our state if you “don’t know” when you’ve been inappropriate with your own staff?— Lindsey Boylan (@LindseyBoylan) March 3, 2021
Boylan has claimed that Cuomo made comments about her appearance and kissed her without consent after a meeting. Boylan also alleged that Cuomo once suggested that they play a game of strip poker while onboard a New York state-owned airplane. Cuomo has denied these claims.The governor’s apology and comments on Wednesday were also criticized by an attorney for a second aide who has made allegations, Charlotte Bennett. Bennett has alleged Cuomo asked her about her sex life and whether she would consider a relationship with an older man. Bennett, 25, reportedly said she thought Cuomo was testing her interest in a possible affair.Debra Katz, the attorney who represents Bennett, said Cuomo’s press conference was “full of falsehoods and inaccurate information”. Katz maintained Cuomo’s claim that he didn’t realize he had made women uncomfortable was duplicitous, as Bennett had notified both her supervisor about Cuomo’s alleged behavior and one of his attorneys.“We are confident that they made him aware of her complaint and we fully expect that the attorney general’s investigation will demonstrate that Cuomo administration officials failed to act on Ms Bennett’s serious allegations or to ensure that corrective measures were taken, in violation of their legal requirements,” Katz remarked.The third accuser, Anna Ruch, was a guest at a wedding Cuomo officiated. In an interview with the New York Times, Ruch said that Cuomo placed his hands on her face, and asked if he could kiss her, moments after they met during a September 2019 wedding. More

Federal authorities on Wednesday warned that people associated with identified militia groups have been discussing plans for another attack on the US Capitol with the aim of removing Democratic politicians on or about 4 March.
The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the US Capitol police department has obtained intelligence pointing to a possible plot to “breach the Capitol by an identified militia group” on Thursday, the agency said on Wednesday.
The Capitol police statement added that it is working with local, state and federal agencies “to stop any threats to the Capitol” in Washington, almost two months after the deadly insurrection at the seat of the US Congress by supporters of Donald Trump on 6 January.
The police further stated: “We are taking the intelligence seriously.”
Thursday marks the date when some rightwing conspiracy theorists have claimed that the former president, Donald Trump, will be sworn in for a second term in office despite the fact that he lost the November presidential election and left the White House on 20 January just before Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th US president.

Julia E. Ainsley
(@JuliaEAinsley)
Breaking: Joint FBI/ DHS intel bulletin warns some domestic violent extremists have “discussed plans to take control of the U.S. Capitol and remove democratic lawmakers on or about 4 March.”

March 3, 2021

Officials at all levels have described the US election as the most secure in the nation’s history.
The attack on 6 January left five people dead on the day, including a police officer, hundreds injured and saw members of congress running for their lives. Two more police officers took their own lives just days after the insurrection.
Trump was impeached for a historic second time for inciting the attack with an incendiary speech outside the White House on the day, where he encouraged supporters to march on the Capitol, where the House and Senate were set to certify Biden’s victory.
The Capitol police statement noted that it had already made “significant security upgrades” at the Capitol.
It was unclear if these upgrades were done in response to this latest threat or whether they included measures already in place following the 6 January insurrection.
The FBI has warned of extremist online “chatter” about attacking the Capitol on 4 or 6 March.
Law enforcement officials at the Capitol were on Wednesday sending out notices to members of Congress notifying them of the detected threat.
Testifying in the Senate about the insurrection, Melissa Smislova, a senior official in intelligence and analysis at the DHS said that the department issued a joint warning with the FBI about midnight on Tuesday about the raised level of online plotting around a potential new attack.
However, the House internal security chief, the acting sergeant at arms issued a bulletin saying that the significance of 4 March as the “true” inauguration date for Trump among some groups had declined.
The theory has been boosted by the conspiracy group QAnon, which had previously predicted that Trump, not Biden, would be inaugurated on 20 January.
House security are no longer anticipating protests or violence from groups traveling to Washington on Thursday, the sergeant, Timothy Blodgen, reported.

Rebecca Kaplan
(@RebeccaRKaplan)
The House Sergeant at Arms issues a bulletin saying that the significance of 3/4 as the “true” inauguration date for Trump among some groups has declined and they are no longer anticipating protests or violence from groups traveling to DC that day — > pic.twitter.com/NJBT26FDkk

March 2, 2021

Meanwhile, William Walker, the commanding general of the District of Columbia national guard, testifying at the same Senate committee hearing as Smislova, said it took army leaders more than three hours to approve a request for guard troops to be deployed to the Capitol on 6 January.
Walker accused the Pentagon of restricting the deployment of troop support to back up the police.
And former vice-president Mike Pence further fueled conspiracy theories in an opinion article that questioned “the integrity of the 2020 election”, citing “significant” and “troubling” voting irregularities, published by the conservative Daily Signal. More

Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterNeera Tanden’s decision to withdraw from consideration to serve as Joe Biden’s budget director marks the first major loss for the still young Biden administration, and sets off a scramble between various political factions to push through a new nominee.Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress thinktank, decided to withdraw her candidacy on Tuesday, in the face of a lack of support among senators needed to advance her through the confirmation process.“Unfortunately, it now seems clear that there is no path forward to gain confirmation, and I do not want continued consideration of my nomination to be a distraction from your other priorities,” Tanden wrote in a letter to Biden released by the White House. Tanden added that she appreciated “how hard you and your team at the White House has worked to win my confirmation”.Tanden was the first of Biden’s cabinet nominees to fail to make it through the confirmation process. New presidents don’t usually see all of their cabinet picks confirmed.But Tanden’s path was always more precarious than the rest. She is well known throughout the Democratic party as a combative figure who often engaged in Twitter fights and criticized both Republicans and Democrats. After her nomination she deleted over 1,000 tweets and in her hearings she said she regretted those criticisms, which included calling Senator Susan Collins of Maine “the worst” and tweeting that “vampires have more heart than Ted Cruz”, the Republican senator from Texas.But Tanden, a staunch Hillary Clinton ally, had also warred with prominent members of the progressive wing of the Democratic party and once allegedly punched Faiz Shakir, who would eventually become Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign manager. Tanden has said she “pushed” him.Sanders, the chairman of one of the committees charged with handling Tanden’s nomination, also questioned large corporate and foreign donations to the Center for American Progress.But the lion’s share of critical questioning by senators was about Tanden’s various attacks.“Of course, your attacks were not just made against Republicans. There were vicious attacks against progressives, people who I have worked with, me personally,” Sanders said during the hearings.Tanden did have her fair share of support. Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, said the White House was “fighting our guts out” to get Tanden confirmed and the US Chamber of Commerce backed her as well. Behind the scenes, Democratic officials continued to lobby senators to support her, even after Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat, announced his opposition to Tanden, citing her tweets and past conduct.Manchin has emerged during the Biden administration as, at times, the deciding figure on matters before the Senate. Other conservative Democrats, like Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, held back from announcing how she would vote. That decision did not inspire confidence in Tanden’s chances and illustrated the influence any senator – especially a conservative one – has in a Senate split 50-50 with Vice-President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaker.Republicans at moments seemed to revel in highlighting Tanden’s past tweets. Tanden’s allies argued that they were motivated by a mix of extreme hypocritical partisanship (where were they, Tanden’s allies grumbled, when Trump was tweeting?) and racism. Tanden was born to immigrant parents from India.But those senators also expressed eagerness to support one of the potential replacements – Shalanda Young, a veteran Hill staffer who is Black.“You know I’m going to vote for you,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the ranking Republican on the Senate budget committee, said on Tuesday during Young’s hearing to serve as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. “You’re highly qualified and I’m going to support you,” Graham added before pressing her on immigration policy.Similarly John Kennedy of Louisiana, one of the Senate’s more bombastic members, said at one point “you may be more than deputy. You may be the sheriff. I don’t expect you to comment on that.”Democratic senators stuck to their support of Tanden during Young’s hearing but after her nomination was pulled lawmakers began lobbying for Young.“We have worked closely with her for several years and highly recommend her for her intellect, her deep expertise on the federal budget and her determination to ensure that our budget reflects our values as a nation,” the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, majority whip, Jim Clyburn, and majority leader, Steny Hoyer, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Her leadership at the OMB would be historic and would send a strong message that this administration is eager to work in close coordination with members of Congress to craft budgets that meet the challenges of our time and can secure broad, bipartisan support.”Other names have been floated as possible OMB nominees and the Senate budget committee is now waiting for the White House to pick someone else. The names floated include Sarah Bianchi, a former director of policy for Biden; Gene Sperling, a former director of the council of economic advisers; Ann O’Leary, the former chief of staff to Governor Gavin Newsom of California.Whoever the White House nominates is poised to have an easier confirmation process than Tanden. More