US Politics

Dozens of former Republican officials who view the party as unwilling to stand up to Donald Trump and his attempts to undermine US democracy are in talks to form a centre-right breakaway party, four people involved in the discussions have said.The early stage discussions include former elected Republicans, former officials in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, George W Bush and Trump, ex-Republican ambassadors and Republican strategists, the people involved told Reuters.More than 120 of them held a Zoom call last Friday to discuss the breakaway group, which would run on a platform of “principled conservatism”, including adherence to the constitution and the rule of law – ideas they say have been trashed by Trump.The plan would be to run candidates in some races but also to endorse centre-right candidates in others, be they Republicans, independents or Democrats, the people involved say.Evan McMullin, who was chief policy director for the House Republican conference and ran as an independent in the 2016 presidential election, told Reuters he co-hosted the Zoom call with former officials concerned about Trump’s grip on the Republicans and the nativist turn the party had taken.Three other people confirmed to Reuters the call and the discussions for a potential splinter party had taken place, but asked not to be identified.Among the call participants were John Mitnick, general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security under Trump; the former Republican congressman Charlie Dent; Elizabeth Neumann, deputy chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security under Trump; and Miles Taylor, another former Trump homeland security official.The talks highlight the wide internal rift over Trump’s false claims of election fraud and the deadly 6 January storming of the US Capitol. Most Republicans remain fiercely loyal to the former president, but others are seeking a new direction for the party.The House of Representatives impeached Trump on 13 January on a charge of inciting an insurrection by exhorting thousands of supporters to march on the Capitol on the day Congress was gathered to certify Joe Biden’s election victory.Call participants said they were particularly dismayed by the fact that more than half of the Republicans in Congress – eight senators and 139 House representatives – voted to block certification of Biden’s election victory just hours after the Capitol siege. Most Republican senators have also indicated they will not support the conviction of Trump in this week’s Senate impeachment trial.“Large portions of the Republican party are radicalising and threatening American democracy,” McMullin told Reuters. “The party needs to recommit to truth, reason and founding ideals or there clearly needs to be something new.”Asked about the discussions for a third party, Jason Miller, a Trump spokesman, said: “These losers left the Republican party when they voted for Joe Biden.”A representative for the Republican National Committee referred to a recent statement from its chair, Ronna McDaniel. “If we continue to attack each other and focus on attacking on fellow Republicans, if we have disagreements within our party, then we are losing sight of 2022 [elections],” McDaniel said on Fox News last month. “The only way we’re going to win is if we come together.”The Biden White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.McMullin said just over 40% of those on the Zoom call backed the idea for a third national party. Another option under discussion is to form a “faction” that would operate either inside the Republican party or outside it.Names under consideration for a new party include the Integrity party and the Center Right party. If it is decided instead to form a faction, one name under discussion is the Center Right Republicans.Potential members are aware that the US political landscape is littered with the remains of previous failed attempts at establishing a third party.“But there is a far greater hunger for a new political party out there than I have ever experienced in my lifetime,” one participant said. More

Police bodycam footage showing officers under attack at the US Capitol attack has been released during the second impeachment trial for Donald Trump. Democrat congressman Eric Swalell played footage captured from the officer’s perspective showing the crowd attacking police with whatever items were at hand, including crutches and a Trump flag. Swalell also revealed vision showing the evacuation of representatives including Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer being ushered away by security
Trump trial shown disturbing footage of lawmakers ‘hunted’ by Capitol mob More

The US could have averted 40% of the deaths from Covid-19, had the country’s death rates corresponded with the rates in other high-income G7 countries, according to a Lancet commission tasked with assessing Donald Trump’s health policy record.Almost 470,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus so far, with the number widely expected to go above half a million in the next few weeks. At the same time some 27 million people in the US have been infected. Both figures are by far the highest in the world.In seeking to respond to the pandemic, Trump has been widely condemned for not taking the pandemic seriously enough soon enough, spreading conspiracy theories, not encouraging mask wearing and undermining scientists and others seeking to combat the virus’ spread.Dr Mary T Bassett, a commission member and director of Harvard University’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, told the Guardian: “The US has fared so badly with this pandemic, but the bungling can’t be attributed only to Mr Trump, it also has to do with these societal failures … That’s not going to be solved by a vaccine.”In a wide-ranging assessment published on Thursday, the commission said Trump “brought misfortune to the USA and the planet” during his four years in office. The stinging critique not only blamed Trump, but also tied his actions to the historical conditions which made his presidency possible.“He was sort of a crowning achievement of a certain period but he’s not the only architect,” said Bassett, “And so we decided it’s important to put him in context, not to minimize how destructive his policy agenda has been and his personal fanning the flames of white supremacy, but to put it in context.”The commission condemned Trump’s response to Covid, but emphasized that the country entered the pandemic with a degraded public health infrastructure. Between 2002 and 2019, US public health spending fell from 3.21% to 2.45% – approximately half the share of spending in Canada and the UK.To determine how many deaths from Covid the US could have avoided, the commission weighted the average death rate in the other G7 countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK – and compared it to the US death rate.In another comparison, the commission found if US life expectancy was equivalent to the average in the other G7 countries, 461,000 fewer Americans would have died in 2018.The Lancet commission on public policy and health in the Trump era, launched in April 2017 to catalogue Trump health policies, examines the driving forces of his 2016 election win and offers policy recommendations. The 33 commissioners are from the US, UK and Canada and work in public health, law schools, medicine, unions, indigenous communities and other groups.The commission devotes as much time in the report to its namesake as it does to the conditions that made him possible.A line is drawn from neoliberal policies pushed in the past 40 years, such as those that intensified the drug war and resulted in mass incarceration, to health inequities Trump exacerbated while in office. Many of the connections date back even further, to the colonization of the Americas and the persistence of white supremacy in society.“I really think one of the accomplishments of the report is its historical truth-telling,” said Bassett, New York City’s health commissioner from 2014 to 2018.Trump’s response to documented health inequities and growing inequality was to attack programs and policies intended to make health insurance more affordable and accessible. In Trump’s first three years in office, there were 2.3 million more people without health insurance.Between 2017 and 2018, the health insurance coverage rate decreased by 1.6 percentage points for Latinos – roughly 1.5 million people – and by 2.8 percentage points for Native American and Alaska native people, while remaining stable for the white population, according to the commission.The report not only assesses health policy, but also includes lengthy sections on immigration, Puerto Rico, reproductive rights, racism and the environment. Dr Adam Gaffney, a commission member and Harvard Medical School assistant professor, said: “To only focus on medical care would neglect the many other inequities and injustices that produce health and sickness.”The commission said evidence is growing that Trump’s regulatory rollbacks have increased death and disease. Between 2016 and 2019, the annual number of deaths from environmental and occupational factors increased by more than 22,000 after years of steady decline.The negative consequences of the rescinded regulations disproportionately affected the states which most supported Trump in 2016. These are also states most affected by rollbacks in health insurance coverage, according to the report.The commission did identify a positive in Trump’s domestic agenda: his support for the First Step Act, a prison and sentencing reform bill which reduced mandatory minimum sentences for a number of drug-related crimes among other things.The commission also noted that historical advances usually follow a period of conflict and struggle and included recommendations for healthcare workers to advance progress in the wake of Trump’s presidency.The report includes a list of policy recommendations to address the issues it raised, including providing compensation for descendants of enslaved Africans and indigenous people, raising taxes on the wealthy, reducing defense spending and adopting a single-payer, national healthcare system.Gaffney said: “I hope this report pushes those with power to pursue the necessary policies to make this a healthier and happier nation.” More

As US president, Donald Trump seemed be talking and tweeting 24 hours a day. That has thrown his near total absence from public life over the past three weeks into sharp relief. The Silence of the Tweets.It also means that when clips of Trump’s rally speeches filled the Senate chamber on day two of his impeachment trial on Wednesday, his voice was jarring and jangling in the ear, like a blowhard from a cruder, coarser time.His speeches, tweets and phone calls were replayed incessantly as the House impeachment managers put their case against him. Seldom has an accused been so damned by their own words. In his fiery claims of a stolen election, his exhortations to “fight like hell” and his failure to denounce hate groups such as the Proud Boys, Trump proved the star witness in his own prosecution.The spectacular irony was that a man who thrived on grabbing attention on TV and social media had left a trail of digital clues that ought to lead all the way to conviction. It was the 21st-century equivalent of a Victorian diary in which the master criminal brags about how he did it.“Trump’s worst problem?” tweeted David Axelrod, former chief campaign strategist for Barack Obama. “Videotape.”It helped Jamie Raskin and his fellow House impeachment managers build a case that this incitement did not begin on 6 January, the day of the insurrection at the US Capitol, but over months of spinning election lies and cheering on political violence.Wearing grey suit, white shirt, deep blue tie, and wielding a blue pen in his right hand, Raskin told the Senate: “He revelled in it and he did nothing to help us as commander-in-chief. Instead he served as the inciter-in-chief, sending tweets that only further incited the rampaging mob. He made statements lauding and sympathising with the insurrectionists.”Congressman Joe Neguse displayed clips of Trump addressing rallies in October where he said he could only lose the election if it was stolen. “Remember he had that no-lose scenario,” Neguse said. “He told his base that the election was stolen.” Such beliefs fueled the so-called “stop the steal” campaign.Another impeachment manager, Eric Swalwell, pored over Trump’s tweets, a goldmine for the prosecution. Among the many examples: the then president retweeted Kylie Jane Kremer, founder of a “Stop the Steal” Facebook group, who promised that “the cavalry” was coming.Swalwell told the senators, who sit at 100 wooden desks on a tiered semicircular platform, that there is “overwhelming” evidence: “President Trump’s conduct leading up to January 6 was deliberate, planned and premeditated. This was not one speech, not one tweet. It was dozens in rapid succession with the specific details. He was acting as part of the host committee.”Swalwell added: “This was never about one speech. He built this mob over many months with repeated messaging until they believed they had been robbed of their vote and they would do anything to stop the certification. He made them believe that their victory was stolen and incited them so he could use them to steal the election for himself.”The trial heard Trump pressuring Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to overturn his election defeat in the state. Congresswoman Madeleine Dean said: “We must not become numb to this. Trump did this across state after state so often, so loudly, so publicly. All because Trump wanted to remain in power.”Her colleague Stacey Plaskett of the Virgin Islands noted an incident last October when dozens of trucks covered in Trump campaign regalia “confronted and surrounded” a Biden-Harris campaign bus traveling from San Antonio to Austin in Texas.“What that video that you just saw does not show is that the bus they tried to run off of the road was filled with young campaign staff, volunteers, supporters, surrogates, people,” she said.And as the saying goes, there’s always a tweet. Plaskett highlighted that a day later, Trump tweeted a video of the episode with the caption, “I LOVE TEXAS.”Plaskett also played a clip of Trump at a presidential debate, telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” when asked to condemn white supremacists. They heard him “loud and clear”, she said, and even used the slogan on their merchandise. Several members of the Proud Boys have been charged in connection with the riots.Later, Plaskett presented chilling audio and video evidence, some of it never made public before, that she said displayed the consequences of Trump’s incendiary words. Capitol police and law enforcement could be heard pleading for backup as the mob closed in. An officer could be seen running past Senator Mitt Romney and warning him to turn around, then Romney was seen breaking into a run to safety.Trump’s political career was always like a child playing with matches. On 6 January, he started a fire. And as Wednesday’s hearing demonstrated, if he ever builds a presidential library and museum, there will be no shortage of multimedia material. More

House Democrats launched their case for convicting Donald Trump for his role in the 6 January attack on the Capitol, arguing methodically that the former US president deliberately organized and incited the assault after months of saying the 2020 election was rigged.The Democrats – called impeachment managers during the trial – used their opening argument to frame the idea that the assault was not a random act of chaos, but one planned and fomented by Trump for months. Once the attack began, they argued, Trump violated his presidential oath to protect the US constitution by not acting to stop it, instead relishing watching it unfold on television.“Trump committed a massive crime against our constitution and our people, and the worst violation of the presidential oath of office in the history of the United States of America,” said congressman Jamie Raskin, the lead impeachment manager.Congressman Joe Neguse, another impeachment manager, dissected Trump’s speech during a 6 January rally, making the case that Trump intended to rile up supporters there to attack the Capitol as electoral votes were being counted and for his supporters to block Joe Biden from officially being certified the winner of the presidential race.He noted Trump publicly invited supporters to Washington DC on that specific day and planned the rally at the exact time Congress was meeting to count electoral votes. When Trump spoke, Neguse said, he encouraged them to “fight” – language that unmistakably signaled to them to attack.“Those words were carefully chosen. They had a specific meaning to that crowd,” Neguse said. “He didn’t just tell them to fight like hell. He told them how, where and when. He made sure they had advance notice.”Democrats spliced their remarks with visceral footage of the violence that unfolded on the day. It was a continuation of the presentation strategy Democrats had launched on Tuesday and was meant to show unmistakable evidence of Trump’s responsibility for the attack.Democrats also on Wednesday planned to show never before seen security footage from the attack, according to a senior aide.Democrats pointed to months of false statements Trump made about the election being stolen leading up to 6 January. Those lies, they said, were a deliberate effort to sow distrust of the election that exploded in the attack on the Capitol. They played clips of television interviews and speeches in which Trump repeatedly refused to commit to accepting a peaceful transition of power.“He built this mob over many months with repeated messaging until they believed that they had been robbed of their vote … and incited them so he could use them to steal the election for himself,” said congressman Eric Swalwell of California, another impeachment manager.Trump was impeached while still in office by the US House of Representatives on one charge of “incitement of insurrection” for his role in the 6 January attack.Raskin also dismissed an argument raised by Trump’s attorneys that the former president’s speech at the rally was protected by the first amendment. While an ordinary citizen’s anti-government speech is protected by the first amendment, Trump had an obligation to protect the nation, Raskin argued. He compared Trump to a fire chief who sent a mob to burn down a theater and then did nothing to stop it.Democrats have so far earned praise for their arguments, even among some Republican senators who voted against proceeding with the trial. So far there have been no no such rave reviews for Trump’s legal team. Bruce Castor, a former Pennsylvania prosecutor, kicked off Trump’s defense on Tuesday with a meandering argument that was widely derided. Trump, watching on television from his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, was reportedly furious with the performance.“Anyone who listened to President Trump’s legal team saw they were unfocused, they attempted to avoid the issue and they talked about everything but the issue at hand,” said Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican senator who voted with Democrats on Tuesday.Cassidy’s vote on Tuesday was significant because he previously voted last month to dismiss the trial on constitutional grounds. A Democratic aide pointed to that flip as evidence it was possible to convince Republicans to vote for impeachment.But Democrats will need to convince 17 Republican senators to join them in order to convict Trump, which seems extremely unlikely to happen.“The managers are going to go in and they are going to move the hearts, minds, and, I think, the consciences of 100 jurors, none of them have voted yet,” another senior aide said. “And we fully expect to prevail in the end.” More

A new transcript has surfaced of the former Trump lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, putting pressure on the Ukrainian government to open an investigation into the Biden family.The transcript of a 40-minute call between Giuliani and two Ukrainian officials, was obtained by Time magazine, and served as a reminder of Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, even as his second is under way in the Senate.The trigger for the first impeachment was a call Trump made to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which he hinted US military aid might depend on Zelenskiy’s willingness to “do us a favour” and launch an investigation that might cloud the image of Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who was on the board of an Ukrainian energy company.In both impeachment trials, Trump is accused of using the power of the presidency in an attempt to secure a second term. The charge against him has escalated from improper pressure on a foreign government to inciting an insurrection, but Republican senators are expected to save him from conviction this time as they did in the first trial a year ago.Giuliani’s call to the Ukrainian officials came three days before Trump’s, on 22 July 2019, to two Zelenskiy aides. One of them, Igor Novikov, sent the transcript to Time earlier this month.“Let these investigations go forward,” Giuliani told them, according to the transcript, which Time said it has verified. “Get someone to investigate this.”The former New York mayor is more restrained in his language than Trump. According to the transcript, he does not make overt threats but repeatedly warned the Ukrainians “to be careful”.“For our country’s sake and your country’s sake, we [need to] get all these facts straight,” Giuliani added. “We fix them and we put it behind us.”The Zelenskiy government resisted the pressure from the Trump administration, and the transcript was supplied to Time as Kyiv seeks to build its relationship with Biden.Novikov has said he will assist a federal investigation of Giuliani reported to be under way in New York, as well as an effort to strip Giuliani of his license to practice law.“That is because I believe Mayor Giuliani’s actions in Ukraine threatened our national security,” Novikov told Time. He left the Zelenskiy administration in August but has retained close ties. “It is our responsibility to make sure that any effort to drag our country into our allies’ domestic politics does not go unpunished.”A lawyer representing Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday morning, and Time reported that Giuliani did not respond its own questions about the transcript.Last week, President Zelenskiy shut down three Ukrainian media networks he accused of spreading Russian propaganda, and which had played a role in the spreading of groundless allegations about the Bidens during the US presidential campaign.“The past is the past,” President Zelenskiy told Time. “I care deeply about the future of our relationship with the United States, so I want to focus on that.” More

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found close-fitting surgical masks worn underneath cloth masks – known as double masking – can significantly enhance protection against Covid-19.This is the first CDC-backed research to recommend “double-masking”, although the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, has recommended the public consider the measure in past briefings.“There’s nothing wrong with people wearing two masks,” Fauci said at a press briefing one week before the research was released. “I often myself wear two masks.”The CDC study found the most protective masks fit well around the face “to prevent leakage of air around the masks edges”, and also recommended knotting ear loops near the facial covering portion of the mask to contour the mask closer to the face.The study did not look at the effectiveness of respirators, like N95s, and most health authorities recommend the public continue to reserve respirators for medical personnel.This CDC study compared wearing no mask, a poorly fitted surgical mask, cloth-only mask and double-masking in a simulation of respiratory droplets between two people – a source and a receiver.The study found when people wear a well-fitted surgical mask covered by a cloth mask, they can increase their own protection from aerosol droplets by 90% or more, and that possible transmission is significantly reduced when both parties wore masks.“Universal masking is a highly effective means to slow the spread of Sars-CoV-2 when combined with other protective measures, such as physical distancing, avoiding crowds and poorly ventilated indoor spaces, and good hand hygiene,” the study found.Importantly, the study also had limitations. The findings are not generalizable to men with beards and facial hair, which can interfere with masks, or to children, whose faces are smaller. As well, the study did not compare two surgical masks or two cloth masks, and the study looked at only one type of cloth mask, though there are many types of mask on the market.Fourteen states and Washington DC have universal masking policies. The Joe Biden administration also recently ordered masks be worn on all federal grounds and on domestic transport. Biden called on all Americans to wear masks for the first 100 days of his presidency, calling it a “patriotic duty”.Recent forecasts have also begun to take universal masking into account. If 95% of people wore masks in public, forecasters at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation believe more than 116,000 lives could be saved by 1 June, compared with the institute’s “worst-case” scenario, in which 702,000 people could die from Covid-19.The CDC first recommended the public wear cloth masks in April 2020, about one month after the American north-east was hit hard by the virus. At the time, those recommendations were vague, asking Americans to consider wearing masks, “fashioned from household items or made at home from common materials at low cost”.While the science on face coverings is “advancing rapidly”, a recent review in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences noted face coverings have been worn to contain airborne pathogens since the 13th century. More

Prosecutors in Fulton county, Georgia, are investigating Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the southern state’s 2020 presidential election results, according to a letter, in the second criminal investigation faced by the former president.The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has sent a letter asking state government officials to preserve documents, including those related to the then president’s call to the Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, pressuring him to “find” more votes.“This matter is of high priority, and I am confident that as fellow law enforcement officers sworn to uphold the constitutions of the United States and Georgia, our acquisition of information and evidence of potential crimes via interviews, documents, videos and electronic records will be cooperative,” said the letter dated 10 February.“This letter is notification that all records potentially related to the administration of the 2020 general election must be preserved, with particular care being given to set aside and preserve those that may be evidence of attempts to influence the actions of persons who were administering that election.“Representatives for the county prosecutor’s office and for Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment.On Monday, Raffensperger’s office opened its own investigation into Trump’s 2 January phone call pressuring him to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s 3 November victory in the state, based on unfounded voter fraud claims by the Trump team. Raffensperger said any further legal efforts would be up to the state’s attorney general.The New York Times first reported the investigation.Trump also faces criminal and civil fraud investigations in New York, with an ongoing crime inquiry into his finances by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, and a civil investigation by New York attorney general, Letitia James.The announcement of the Georgia investigation is important for Willis, who is new to the post.She is the first African American woman to hold the job in Georgia’s most populous county, the New York Times further reported, and has promised reforms.Willis is tackling high homicide numbers in Atlanta as well as a review of the handling of the police killing of Rayshard Brooks, last June. More