US Politics

The message was a stark one. “America is in serious decline,” the person wrote. “Is a civil war imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn’t come to that! But it might.”It reads like an entry on a message board popular with the insurrectionists who broke into the US Capitol on 6 January – expressing a sentiment at once shocking and shockingly routine in 2021 America.But the words are from 1992 America, written in a letter to a newspaper by Timothy McVeigh, who three years later would carry out the Oklahoma City bombing, the deadliest incident of domestic terrorism in US history. An anti-government, white supremacist army veteran, McVeigh set off a truck bomb underneath a day care facility in a federal building, killing 168 people including 19 children.The attack spawned the largest criminal case in US history. With conspiracy theories threatening the public trust even in those relatively innocent times for the truth, and the contemporaneous murder trial of OJ Simpson having fed widespread disillusionment with the American justice system, federal prosecutors knew that they would be working under a microscope.But the lead prosecutor dispatched by Washington to Oklahoma a day after the bombing, Merrick Garland, demonstrated a particularly honed sense for what the investigation required and how to deliver it, according to former colleagues.Now, after 23 years as one of the country’s top appeals court judges, Garland, 68, is once again returning to a lead prosecutor role, tapped by Joe Biden to run the justice department as attorney general – with the threat from anti-government extremists again on the agenda.“We had tremendous confidence in him, and I think his handling of that very challenging situation was flawless,” said Jamie Gorelick, Garland’s boss at the time of the Oklahoma City attack and one of the country’s longest-serving deputy attorneys general. “If you look at his background, he was very well suited for working both with the FBI and the other investigative agencies, and well-regarded by all of them, and he had a wonderful way of bringing people together on the ground.”Stewing in pernicious lies about election fraud spread by Donald Trump, the United States is once again facing a rising threat of violence from anti-Washington extremists and white supremacists, according to a rare bulletin warning issued last week by the department of homeland security – and the Oklahoma City attack is riding high in some minds.“The Oklahoma City bombing and its legacy are critical to understanding the domestic extremist movements of today,” the Southern Poverty Law Center said in a report last year.In spite of his being the target of an infamous Republican stunt four years ago that blocked his nomination to the US supreme court, Garland is expected to be confirmed by the US Senate as attorney general in the coming weeks.People who know Garland from his work in Oklahoma believe that the country could have no better ally in the fight against homegrown extremism, a broad job whose challenges include not only prosecuting the recent insurrectionists but also preventing the next attack, disrupting extremist groups on social media, rooting out white supremacists from police forces and the military, and restoring public trust in the rule of law.“He played a pivotal role here, but I think, fast-forward to 2021, and he can play a remarkable role in bringing our country back together,” said Kari Watkins, executive director of the Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum. “Judge Garland is a unifier. He brought families to the table, he brought survivors, first responders to the table that were still dealing with loss, and surgeries, and putting their lives back together.”Federal authorities have charged at least 150 people in the invasion of the Capitol, in which five people were killed including one police officer and one woman trampled to death. Two additional police officers died by suicide “in the aftermath of the battle”, police said.Asked how Garland might handle the challenge ahead, Gorelick pointed to their work together in the mid-1990s on a wave of bombings and arsons of African American churches in the south carried out by white men, and to separate prosecutions of attacks on abortion clinics.“I would say that his experience in Oklahoma City – and the work we needed to do in response to the church bombings that took place when we were at main justice in the mid-1990s, as well as the abortion clinic bombings – grounded him in the importance of civil rights,” Gorelick said, “and in the importance of coordinated and strong approaches to dealing with the enforcement of our laws relating to civil rights and protecting the country against terrorism of any sort.”In a speech accepting Biden’t nomination one day after the Capitol attack, Garland invoked the historical roots of the justice department as an agency to “slay the first incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan and its offshoots” and “ensure civil rights which were under militant attack.”Those principles “echo today in the priorities that lie before us, from ensuring racial equity in our justice system to meeting the evolving threat of violent extremism,” Garland said.Through each turn of his career, Garland’s work in Oklahoma City has been revisited and commended. After he was nominated to the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia by Bill Clinton, Garland received a letter of support from Oklahoma’s Republican governor, Frank Keating.“Merrick distinguished himself in a situation where he had to lead a highly complicated investigation and make quick decisions during critical times,” Keating wrote.Nominating him for a supreme court seat, Barack Obama called Garland’s work on the Oklahoma City bombing case “particularly notable and inspiring.”“In the wake of the bombing, he traveled to Oklahoma to oversee the case, and in the ensuing months coordinated every aspect of the government’s response,” Obama said, “working with federal agents, rescue workers, local officials, and others to bring the perpetrators to justice.”Informed by attorney general Janet Reno while he was still en route to Oklahoma that he would be conducting an initial court appearance with McVeigh on a military base that same evening, Garland made a defining decision, insisting over the objections of military police that the hearing be open to the media, to ensure transparency and discourage conspiracy thinking.During the investigation, Garland chose which agency would take the lead in pursuing which line of evidence. With the Simpson trial in mind, he insisted on pristine procedure in the collection of evidence, repeatedly seeking subpoenas and search warrant requests – “everything by the book,” said Gorelick.He advocated for the relocation of the trial to Denver to avoid accusations of a spoiled jury. He hand-picked the prosecution team and demanded a strong defense counsel. And he made time and space for victims and their families, often reaching out to them personally.“He used the power of persuasion rather than command,” said Gorelick.In a video-taped oral history for the Oklahoma memorial recorded in 2013 and viewed by the Guardian, Garland said he was keenly aware of the challenges of bringing a major case to trial years after the crime.“It’s the issue about conspiracy theories, about ‘Maybe somebody else did it’ or ‘You hadn’t done everything’, or ‘You hadn’t found – ’,” Garland said in the oral history. “I wanted to be sure we had done everything we could possibly do to find every person who was involved.“We just wanted to be sure that we – when we had somebody, that it was the right person, and that it wasn’t the wrong person, and that we had the evidence necessary to convict.”McVeigh was convicted by a jury on 11 out of 11 charges, sentenced to death and executed in 2001. His main accomplice, Terry Nichols, was convicted and is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole. Two other accomplices became key witnesses for prosecutors.“That case turned out to be something the world was watching – I think eerily close to where we are as a country today,” said Watkins. “People are watching to see what happens.” More

Republicans senators made a lowball offer on Sunday to cooperate with the Biden administration on a new coronavirus relief package, increasing the likelihood that the White House will seek to bypass Republicans to fund its proposal.A group of 10 Republican senators led by Susan Collins of Maine pitched Joe Biden a sketch of a relief plan with a reported $600bn total price tag – less than a third of the $1.9tn stimulus package the Biden team has laid out over the last days.The yawning gap between the two numbers caused some observers to question whether Republicans were really trying to reach a deal – or instead were laying the groundwork for future accusations that Biden had not seriously pursued his promises to try to work with Republicans.Asked about the new Republican offer on the NBC News program Meet the Press, national economic council director Brian Deese said Biden is “open to ideas” but would not be stalled.“What he’s uncompromising about is the need to move with speed on a comprehensive approach here,” Deese said.“We have a virus crisis; we have an economic crisis. We have to get shots in people’s arms. We have to get the schools reopened so that parents can go back to work. And we need to provide direct relief to families and businesses across the country who are really struggling here.”One signatory of the Republican offer, senator Rob Portman of Ohio, who has announced his upcoming retirement, told CNN that the $1.9tn price tag was too high “at a time of unprecedented deficits and debts”.But moderate Democratic senator Jon Tester of Montana said the twin crises of the pandemic and record unemployment demanded decisive action. “I don’t think $1.9tn, even though it is a boatload of money, is too much money,” Tester told CNN. “I think now is not the time to starve the economy.”The US has just surpassed 26m confirmed Covid cases and 440,000 deaths. Unemployment insurance claims topped 1m last week and 30 million Americans reported suffering from food scarcity.Hoping for a break with the lockstep partisanship of the Donald Trump years, Biden has made working with Republicans a stated priority of his early presidency.But his advisers have also signaled that speed is important and that they will use a parliamentary measure known as budget reconciliation to fund their Covid relief bill if no Republicans come onboard.With a 50-member majority in the US Senate clinched by the vote of vice-president Kamala Harris, Democrats could advance the relief package alone – if they are able to craft a deal that does not lose centrists such as West Virginia senator Joe Manchin.“This is a unique crisis,” Deese told CNN. “It’s a unique health crisis, a unique economic crisis, and it’s one that calls on all of us to work together with the speed that we need to put a comprehensive response in place.”The Biden plan calls for $1,400 payments to individuals, enhanced unemployment benefits, a $15 minimum wage, support for schools to help them reopen safely, and money for vaccine distribution and administration.Republicans pointed out that Congress has already appropriated $4tn for coronavirus relief in the last year and that some of the $900bn allocated last month has not been spent.Portman said the proposal for $1,400 payouts to individuals in the Biden plan should be restricted based on income. Manchin has echoed that proposal, saying that families earning from $250,000-$300,000 should not necessarily qualify.The importance of keeping Manchin onboard was underscored when the senator reacted negatively to a surprise appearance by Harris on a local West Virginia television station calling for support for more Covid relief legislation. The move was received as an awkward effort to pressure Manchin.“I saw it, I couldn’t believe it,” Manchin said in a local news video. “No one called me. We’re going to try to find a bipartisan pathway forward, but we need to work together. That’s not a way of working together.”In a letter to Biden outlining their offer, the more moderate Republicans quoted his call in his inaugural address for bipartisan unity and said “we welcome the opportunity to work with you.”“We believe that this plan could be approved quickly by Congress with bipartisan support,” the letter said.The Republican proposal mirrored some provisions of the Biden plan, such as $160bn in new spending on vaccines, testing, treatment, and personal protective equipment. The Republicans said they would provide more details on Monday.But Democrats did not appear willing to wait for long to hear the Republican pitch. Senator Bernie Sanders, the incoming chairman of the budget committee, told ABC News’ This Week program: “We have got to act and we have got to act now”. More

An opportunity for a new beginning between Saudi Arabia and Iran has been presented by Joe Biden’s presidency, two leading Saudi and Iranians close to their diplomatic leaderships are proposing in an article in the Guardian today.The article is co-written by Abdulaziz Sager, the Saudi Arabian chairman and founder of the Gulf Research Center, and Hossein Mousavian, a former senior Iranian diplomat and now a nuclear specialist based at Princeton University.Their proposals are the fruit of a track 2, or backchannel initiative that has been under way privately for months.Their discussions are one of the few forms of private dialogue under way between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and to the extent that their discussions have been approved by serving diplomats in both capitals the initiative may signal a new willingness on both sides to the use the advent of the Biden presidency to explore an end to the years long enmity between the two countries.In an interview with the reformist Iranian newspaper Etemaad last week, the Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, hinted at a new approach. He also accepted that opportunities for dialogue with Riyadh had been missed, adding that it was imperative that Iran was the pioneer in this enterprise.He said that “we have no territorial claim or interest in accessing the natural resources of other regional countries; therefore, it is Iran that can initiate this effort from a position of wealth. We shouldn’t wait for others.”Sager and Mousavian warn of the consequences if Saudi Arabia and Iran remain in conflict, writing that “we remain at the mercy of a single miscalculation that could turn the protracted cold war between our states hot, potentially ushering in disastrous consequences for the entire region”.They claim that both countries perceive the other as seeking to dominate in the region, with Riyadh convinced that Iran is trying to encircle the kingdom with its allied proxy supporters while Tehran views Saudi Arabia as in alliance with the US to undermine the Islamic Republic.“Riyadh charges Iran with interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign states like Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain, and Iraq; Tehran sees Saudi Arabia doing the same in these very countries.”They urge both sides to agree – perhaps with the help of the UN – a set of principles around non-interference, the inviolability of national boundaries, rejection of violence, respecting the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations, respect for religious minorities and abandonment of the use of proxy forces to advance national interests. The principles also support the free flow of oil and navigation, and rejection of the procurement of weapons of mass destruction.The authors stress: “Postponing de-escalation would be a grave mistake, as the region has proved time and again that on the rare occasion that opportunities for constructive dialogue present themselves, they must be grasped swiftly before they vanish.”They admit that the task may seem impossible, but claim that both sides have taken steps to show they are willing to avoid an inescapable zero-sum confrontation, for instance by quiet cooperation over facilitating Iranian Muslim participation in the hajj pilgrimage.
On Thursday the French president, Emmanuel Macron, was reported as saying Saudi Arabia may need to be involved in any follow on to the Iran nuclear deal signed by Iran, the US, three European powers, China and Russia. There is a widespread expectation that if the US and Iran could get back into mutual compliance with the deal discussions about Iran’s relations with its regional neighbours would have to follow. More

Back in May 2019, we – an Iranian former diplomat and a Saudi chair of the Gulf Research Center – called for dialogue between our countries’ respective leaders. We warned that the alternative would increase tensions that could boil over into a catastrophic confrontation.Since then we have witnessed a string of attacks on Saudi and Iranian oil tankers in international waters; a major strike on Saudi Aramco facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais; a close brush with conflict between Iran and the United States in the aftermath of General Qassem Soleimani’s killing by a US drone; and then, late last year, the killing of a top nuclear scientist in Iran. While tempers seem to have cooled since then, we remain at the mercy of a single miscalculation that could turn the protracted cold war between our states hot, potentially ushering in disastrous consequences for the entire region. With the arrival of a new administration in Washington, the time has come to move from confrontation to dialogue.During the past four decades, relations between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran have oscillated between confrontation and competition but also cooperation. Today, we are at the bottom of a cycle. Yet we share a sense that while our governments stand at odds on a range of regional issues, there is nothing inevitable about this enmity – nor is it condemned to be permanent.The first step toward a tolerable modus vivendi would be for each side to recognise the other’s threat perceptions – real or imagined – and embrace a set of foundational principles upon which to build.Both Iran and Saudi Arabia perceive the other to be keen on dominating the region. Riyadh views Iran as intent on encircling the kingdom with its allied non-state actors; Tehran views Riyadh as a key facilitator of US efforts to contain and undermine the Islamic Republic. Each country believes that the other is determined to spread its own Islamic jurisprudence at the expense of the other. Riyadh considers Iran’s ballistic missiles arsenal to be a threat to its national security, especially its critical infrastructure. Tehran regards the Kingdom’s purchase of large quantities of sophisticated western arms as exacerbating the conventional weapons asymmetry in the region. Riyadh charges Iran with interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign states such as Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain and Iraq; Tehran sees Saudi Arabia doing the same in these very countries.To break this vicious cycle and move beyond the blame game, our leaders need to engage in direct discussions guided by the following fundamentals: i) conducting relations based on mutual respect, according to mutual interest and on an equal footing; ii) preserving and respecting sovereignty, territorial integrity, political independence and the inviolability of international boundaries of all states in the region; iii) non-interference in internal affairs of states; iv) rejecting the threat or use of force and committing to peaceful settlement of all disputes; v) rejecting the policy of supporting sectarian divisions, employing sectarianism for political objectives, and supporting and arming militias in the regional states; vi) respecting the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations, and in particular inviolability of diplomatic facilities; vii) strengthening Islamic solidarity and avoiding conflict, violence, extremism and sectarian tension; viii) full cooperation on counterterrorism measures; ix) treating the religious minority in the other’s country as citizens of that country, not primarily as co-religionists with transnational loyalties; x) rejecting the pursuit of hegemony by any state in the region; xi) ensuring freedom of navigation and the free flow of oil and other resources to and from the region, and the protection of critical infrastructure; and xii) prohibiting the development or procurement of all forms of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).Mutually acceptable guiding principles are a critical starting point. But action is needed to build confidence after decades of antagonism and mistrust. Diplomacy requires dialogue while direct discussions will require a roadmap, which includes a set of reciprocal confidence-building measures and pursues a clear vision for a mutually acceptable regional security arrangement. The United Nations can play an important role in leading or supporting such a regional dialogue process.All this may seem an impossible task for two governments apparently locked in an escalatory cycle. Yet it is important to recognise that both countries have successfully maintained quiet channels of cooperation and dialogue all along. Even amid escalating tensions, Iran and Saudi Arabia engaged in fruitful dialogue over facilitating Iranian Muslim participation in the hajj pilgrimage.Saudi Arabia and Iran have already taken actions that belie the notion of an inescapable, zero-sum struggle. Our two nations can and should build on these positive examples of tentative cooperation to reduce tensions in our volatile region at a time when any spark could set alight the entire region. Joe Biden’s presidency now offers an opportunity for a new beginning. But time is of the essence. Postponing de-escalation would be a grave mistake, as the region has proved time and again that on the rare occasion that opportunities for constructive dialogue present themselves, they must be grasped swiftly before they vanish.Abdulaziz Sager is the chair and founder of the Gulf Research Center. Hossein Mousavian, a former senior Iranian diplomat, is a Middle East security and nuclear specialist at Princeton University. More

In Arizona and Oregon, they rebuked opponents of Donald Trump’s assault on democracy. In Hawaii, they defended followers of the QAnon conspiracy movement. And in Texas, they adopted a slogan with dark historical connotations: “We are the storm.”To understand the future of the Republican party, start with the army of increasingly radicalised foot soldiers who shape it at state level.Far from responding to the loss of the White House to Joe Biden by tacking to the political centre, local parties appear to be racing to the extreme right by giving safe harbour to white nationalism, QAnon – an antisemitic theory involving Satan-worshipping cannibals and a child sex trafficking ring – and “the big lie” that the presidential election was stolen by Democrats.“The central story of American politics right now is that one of the two parties is ‘radicalizing against democracy’ in front of our eyes,” tweeted Chris Hayes, an author and host on the MSNBC network. “There are tons of other stories as well, but they all come after that, I think.”The Republican party has been drifting towards rightwing populism for years, with notable examples including the Tea Party movement, the nomination of Sarah Palin for vice-president and the total capitulation to Trump.Moderate Republicans hoped that Trump’s failures at the ballot box – he was the first president since 1932 to lose re-election, the House and the Senate – might generate an “autopsy” similar to that which followed Mitt Romney’s defeat eight years ago and a reset aimed at broadening its appeal.But recent evidence suggests that state parties are embracing Trumpism with renewed zeal, along with the fantasies of the far-right fringe. The most explosive demonstration came on 6 January, when a violent mob stormed the US Capitol in Washington in a bid to overturn Trump’s election defeat while displaying the Confederate flag, a sweatshirt that said “Camp Auschwitz” and “Q” shirts and “Q” banners.The evidence is overwhelming that local parties across the country are radicalizedTim Miller, former political director of Republican Voters Against Trump, said: “The evidence is overwhelming that local parties across the country, in blue states and red states, are radicalized and support extremely far outside the mainstream positions like, for example, ending our our democratic experiment to install Donald Trump as president over the will of the people.“They believe in insane Covid denialism and QAnon and all these other conspiracies. It’s endemic, not just a couple of state parties. It’s the vast majority of state parties throughout the country.”In the internal battle between conservatives and extremists, the extremists appear to be winning. The state party in Oregon recently condemned Liz Cheney and nine other House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over the Capitol insurrection. It cited a groundless conspiracy theory that the riot was a “false flag” operation staged to discredit the president’s supporters.In Hawaii, the party’s official Twitter account claimed that QAnon followers were merely displaying misguided patriotism and “largely motivated by a sincere and deep love for America”. QAnon has been identified by the FBI as a domestic terrorism threat. (Following a backlash, the state party’s vice-chairman, Edwin Boyette, resigned and the tweets were deleted.)In Minnesota, Jennifer Carnahan, the state party chairwoman, suggested that Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow and a Trump ally and election denier, should run for governor. In Michigan, Meshawn Maddock, who joined a pro-Trump rally near the US Capitol a day before the riots, is set to become party co-chair.In Kentucky, Republicans in Nelson county voted to censure Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, over his statements on the Senate floor criticising Trump for his role in the Capitol violence. In Pennsylvania, Republican leaders “are all-in for Trump more than ever”, the New York Times reported, noting that they “have made loyalty to the defeated ex-president the sole organizing principle of the party”.Then there is Arizona, where last weekend Republicans voted to censure Governor Doug Ducey, who certified Trump’s defeat in the state, as well as the Trump critics Jeff Flake, a former senator, and Cindy McCain, the widow of Senator John McCain. The state party also re-elected its chair, Kelli Ward, a self-described “Trump Republican” who is among the most unabashed promoters of his election lies.Arizona has become an election battleground that narrowly flipped from Trump to Biden last November with the help of young Latinos, newcomers to the state and growing suburban communities. A Republican shift to the far right is therefore seen by many as electoral suicide.Mark Salter, who was a close friend and adviser to McCain, said: “Trump lost re-election because because minority voters turned out in greater numbers than they did in 2016 and because the suburbs, especially suburban women, turned decisively against him.”Extremists screw up elections. If you’re a Republican seeking power, you’ve got to do something about these peopleWard and other extremists “screw up elections” for Republicans, Salter added. “So if you’re a Republican who’s interested in power and exercising it and advancing whatever your policy principles are, you’ve really got to do something about these people.”Texas is another example with huge electoral implications. The party chairman is now Allen West, a former Florida congressman who in 2014 described Barack Obama as “an Islamist” who is “purposefully enabling the Islamist cause”. When the supreme court threw out Trump’s challenge to the election, West hinted at secession, arguing that “law-abiding states should bond together and form a union of states that will abide by the constitution”.Under West, the state party posted a tweet urging people to follow it on Gab, a social media app known to be used by white supremacists, and adopted the provocative slogan: “We are the storm”.Steve Schmidt, a founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, noted that the term echoes both the Sturmmann (storm troopers) and der Stürmer (the Stormer) newspaper of Nazi Germany. “So the idea of being the storm is deeply embedded in the mythology of the extremist Nazi fascistic ideologies of both past and present,” he said.More recently “the storm” is also a phrase used by devotees of QAnon predicting an apocalyptic showdown between Trump and his foes. Schmidt added: “In every state party there are QAnon adherents. Some state parties are being consumed by them. You can certainly say four – Texas, Oregon, Arizona and big parts of California – at a minimum and it’s likely to be more.“There will be more candidates who subscribe to the theories of the movement in 2022 and beyond. It will continue to metastasise to some degree. Shutting off the Twitter account, while a good thing, is just another game of Whac-a-Mole that puts it deeper underground where more extreme and virulent strains emerge in various places. The river flows to the ocean.”Some local parties insist that it is possible to express solidarity with Trump while rejecting QAnon. Republicans in Palm Beach county in Florida are “pretty united” in support for the former president, said chairman Michael Barnett, who does not blame him for the sacking of the US Capitol. “I don’t get any kind of sense that there was any upset or anger with the president whatsoever.“We have a lot of Trump supporters on the ground, a grassroots movement that wave signs and knock doors and are very active locally, who are waving Trump 2024 signs. They want him to run for re-election.”Barnett confirmed that he has seen evidence of QAnon’s presence but it has not come close to taking over the state party. “Some of them have run for office but they don’t have any influence on what we do as a county party and certainly not what the state party does, as far as who we support for elections, our policies, our platform or anything like that.”He added: “They are a fringe and I wish they would go away. We have nothing to do with QAnon and we want nothing to do with QAnon or their supporters. I have served seven years as the first Black chairman of the Republican party of Palm Beach county and anybody you speak to knows that we don’t tolerate or put up with any of that racist nonsense.”Trump was the avatar for this radicalisation that was already happening in various offshoots of the Republican voter baseTrump himself, however, has repeatedly failed to condemn QAnon while bragging that its supporters “like me very much”. Experts suggest that it is not clear where fealty to Trump ends and fealty to the extremist ideology begins. The process of Republican radicalisation has been going on for years, according to Jared Holt, an investigative reporter at Right Wing Watch.“These far-right beliefs embodied themselves in a candidate which was Trump,” he said. “He was the avatar for this radicalisation that was already happening in various offshoots of the Republican voter base. To some degree Trump was a leader and a coalescing figure for these far-right ideas and movements but I don’t think that those ideas are necessarily unique to Trump.”The grassroots trend is manifesting itself in Washington. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a freshman congresswoman from Georgia, has previously endorsed QAnon, approved calls for the execution of Democrats and harassed a survivor of a school mass shooting. She is now calling for Biden’s impeachment. Yet she has been rewarded with a seat on the House education committee.The New York Times reported this week that Congressman Paul Gosar of Arizona visited the Oath Keepers, a rightwing militia group that believes America is already fighting a second civil war. Gosar and a handful of other Republican House members have “ties to extremist groups who pushed violent ideas and conspiracy theories and whose members were prominent among those who stormed the halls of Congress”, the paper said.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic congresswoman from New York, has warned that white supremacist sympathisers now sit at the heart of the Republican caucus. “This is extremely dangerous, an extremely dangerous threshold we have crossed because we are now away from acting out of fealty to their president that they had in the Oval Office, and now we are talking about fealty to white supremacist organizations as a political tool,” Ocasio-Cortez told Hayes on MSNBC.Trump’s continued grip on the party was evident this week when 45 out of 50 Republican senators, including McConnell, voted to dismiss his impeachment trial before it began, implying that his eventual acquittal is guaranteed – likely to provide him with fresh political momentum. It was a final surrender of the Republican establishment: whatever senators’ private thoughts, few dare defy the state parties’ cult of Trump.Miller, a writer-at-large at the Bulwark website, said: “I didn’t ever think that there was any momentum to convict him because I looked at what the local Republicans were saying. I remember saying to folks in the days after January 6, ‘Compare the statements that are coming out from Republican state parties to what the senators are saying’ – and there was a big disconnect.“The state parties were in defence of Trump. They were advancing conspiracy theories about how it was really Antifa in disguise. They were the canary in the coalmine for me as far as the fact that these senators were not going to to convict Trump. Everybody represents their own constituency. What’s notable is that the state parties are closest to the constituents so they know what the constituents want. What the constituents want is fealty to Trump.” More

If there were ever a time for bold government, it is now. Covid, joblessness, poverty, raging inequality and our last chance to preserve the planet are together creating an existential inflection point.Fortunately for America and the world, Donald Trump is gone, and Joe Biden has big plans for helping Americans survive Covid and then restructuring the economy, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and creating millions of green jobs.But Republicans in Congress don’t want to go along. Why not?Mitch McConnell and others say America can’t afford it. “We just passed a program with over $900bn in it,” groused Senator Mitt Romney, the most liberal of the bunch.Rubbish. We can’t afford not to. Fighting Covid will require far more money. People are hurting.Besides, with the economy in the doldrums it’s no time to worry about the national debt. The best way to reduce the debt as a share of the economy is to get the economy growing again.The real reason Republicans want to block Biden is they fear his plans will workRepairing ageing infrastructure and building a new energy-efficient one will make the economy grow even faster over the long term – further reducing the debt’s share.No one in their right mind should worry that public spending will “crowd out” private investment. If you hadn’t noticed, borrowing is especially cheap right now. Money is sloshing around the world, in search of borrowers.It’s hard to take Republican concerns about debt seriously when just four years ago they had zero qualms about enacting one of the largest tax cuts in history, largely for big corporations and the super-wealthy.If they really don’t want to add to the debt, there’s another alternative. They can support a tax on super-wealthy Americans.The total wealth of America’s 660 billionaires has grown by a staggering $1.1tn since the start of the pandemic, a 40% increase. They alone could finance almost all of Biden’s Covid relief package and still be as rich as they were before the pandemic. So why not a temporary emergency Covid wealth tax?The real reason Republicans want to block Biden is they fear his plans will work.It would be the Republican’s worst nightmare: all the anti-government claptrap they’ve been selling since Ronald Reagan will be revealed as nonsense.Government isn’t the problem and never was. Bad government is the problem, and Americans have just had four years of it. Biden’s success would put into sharp relief Trump and Republicans’ utter failures on Covid, jobs, poverty, inequality and climate change, and everything else.Biden and the Democrats would reap the political rewards in 2022 and beyond. Democrats might even capture the presidency and Congress for a generation. After FDR rescued America, the Republican party went dark for two decades.Trumpian Republicans in Congress have an even more diabolical motive for blocking Biden. They figure if Americans remain in perpetual crises and ever-deepening fear, they’ll lose faith in democracy itself.This would open the way for another strongman demagogue in 2024 – if not Trump, a Trump-impersonator like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley or Donald Trump Jr.The worst-kept secret in Washington is Biden doesn’t really need RepublicansIf Biden is successful, Americans’ faith in democracy might begin to rebound – marking the end of the nation’s flirtation with fascism. If he helps build a new economy of green jobs with good wages, even Trump’s angry white working-class base might come around.The worst-kept secret in Washington is Biden doesn’t really need Republicans, anyway. With their razor-thin majorities in both houses of Congress, Democrats can enact Biden’s plans without a single Republican vote.The worry is Biden wants to demonstrate “bipartisan cooperation” and may try so hard to get some Republican votes that his plans get diluted to the point where Republicans get what they want: failure.Biden should forget bipartisanship. Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans didn’t give a hoot about bipartisanship when they and Trump were in power.If Republicans try to stonewall Biden’s Covid relief plan, Biden and the Democrats should go it alone through a maneuver called “reconciliation”, allowing a simple majority to pass budget legislation.If Republicans try to block anything else, Biden should scrap the filibuster – which now requires 60 senators to end debate. The filibuster isn’t in the constitution. It’s anti-democratic, giving a minority of senators the power to block the majority. It was rarely used for most of the nation’s history.The filibuster can be ended by a simple majority vote, meaning Democrats have the power to scrap it. Biden will have to twist the arms of a few recalcitrant Democrats, but that’s what presidential leadership often requires.The multiple crises engulfing America are huge. The window of opportunity for addressing them is small. If ever there was a time for boldness, it is now. More

Donald Trump has abruptly parted ways with the two lead lawyers working on his defence for his Senate impeachment trial, a source familiar with the situation said, leaving the former US president’s legal strategy in disarray.Butch Bowers and Deborah Barberi, two South Carolina lawyers, are no longer on Trump’s team, the source said, describing the move as a “mutual decision”.Three other lawyers associated with the team, Josh Howard of North Carolina and Johnny Gasser and Greg Harris of South Carolina, also parted ways with Trump, another source said.A third source said Trump had differences with Bowers over strategy ahead of the trial. The president is still contending that he was the victim of mass election fraud in the 3 November election won by Joe Biden.It leaves Trump’s defence team in turmoil as he prepares for a trial starting on 9 February to consider an article of impeachment passed by the House of Representatives charging him with inciting his supporters to storm the US Capitol on 6 January.It was unclear who would now represent the former president at the trial. His White House lawyers at his first impeachment trial last year, Pat Cipollone and Patrick Philbin, are not expected to be a part of the proceedings.“The Democrats’ efforts to impeach a president who has already left office is totally unconstitutional and so bad for our country,” said Jason Miller, a Trump adviser.“In fact, 45 senators have already voted that it is unconstitutional. We have done much work, but have not made a final decision on our legal team, which will be made shortly,” Miller said.Forty-five Senate Republicans backed a failed effort last Tuesday to halt Trump’s impeachment trial, in a show of party unity that some cited as a clear sign he will not be convicted of inciting insurrection at the Capitol. More

Republican party leaders will meet with extremist Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene next week as an ongoing crisis over her racist and bizarre political views continues to roil American politics.Meanwhile, Greene tweeted on Saturday that she had had a phone call with Donald Trump which she described as “great” and that she was “so grateful for his support” – probably cementing her position as a champion of the far-right Trumpist wing of the party.Greene, who has in the past expressed support for the racist QAnon conspiracy movement, has been the subject of a number of media reports revealing her past posts on social media that support or promote a range of fringe, violent and bigoted ideas.Some important outside groups have demanded the Republican party condemn her and Democrats are pushing for Greene’s removal from Congress or at the very least that she be taken off the important committees that she’s been given positions on.Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House leader, will now sit down for a conversation with Greene next week, his office said. But Republican leaders have so far offered no meaningful condemnation of Greene or indication that they will take action against her.Greene herself has remained angrily defiant in the face of the criticism, though her Facebook profile has had many posts removed. “I will never back down. I will never give up,” she said in a statement on Friday.Since arriving in Congress Greene has become a symbol of how far to the right much of the Republican party moved under Donald Trump and the continued influence of extremists in its ranks, especially after the 6 January attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.Democratic congresswoman Cori Bush said Friday she is moving her office away from Greene due to safety concerns after Greene and her staff berated her and refused to wear masks. Bush told MSNBC she is moving her office, “not because I’m scared” of Greene, “because I am here to do a job for the people of St​ Louis”.“What I cannot do is continue to look over my shoulder wondering if a white supremacist in Congress, by the name of Marjorie Taylor Greene … is conspiring against us,” she said.Calls for action against Greene have grown louder as more and more reports have emerged of her extreme views, In past social media posts uncovered by CNN, Greene indicated support for executing Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. In a 2018 Facebook post reported by MediaMatters, she echoed conspiracy theories that the wildfires that ravaged California that year were caused by a laser from space triggered by a group of Democratic politicians and companies for financial gain.In a 2019 confrontation with survivors of the Parkland mass shooting documented on tape, she appeared to accost the students and later echoed conspiracy claims that mass shooting survivors and family members of victims are “crisis actors” and the attacks that killed their loved ones were staged as a plot to pass gun control laws.Some of her views embrace antisemitic tropes and that has prompted some Republican Jewish groups to speak out against her.The Republican Jewish Coalition said on Friday it is working with part leaders on “next steps” and noted that it opposed Greene’s 2020 election because “she repeatedly used offensive language in long online video diatribes” and “promoted bizarre political conspiracy theories”.Meanwhile the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations – which includes major conservative Jewish groups groups like AIPAC and American Friends of Likud among the 53 Jewish groups its represents – issued a strongly worded condemnation and call for action.The group said Greene was spreading “baseless hate against the Jewish people” and called for a “swift and commensurate” response from political leaders.Elsewhere the Human Rights Campaign has called for McCarthy to remove Greene from her committee assignments.“There must be consequences for her actions. The Human Rights Campaign calls on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to hold her accountable and remove Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from all her assigned Congressional committees at the very least,” said HRC President Alphonso David. More