US Politics

Donald Trump’s campaign has sought to distance him from efforts to create a “Patriot party”, an idea the former president has reportedly toyed with since his election defeat.On Monday, the former president’s campaign committee, Donald J Trump for President (DJTFP), disavowed claims by a new political action committee (PAC) called the Patriot party, that the two were part of a joint fundraising campaign. It coincided with Trump setting up the “Office of the Former President”, in Florida.DJTFP said it made the statement to the Federal Election Commission “out of concern for confusion among the public, which may be misled to believe that Patriot party’s activities have been authorised by Mr Trump or DJTFP – or that contributions to this unauthorised committee are being made to DJTFP – when that is not true”.Trump had hinted in the days following Biden’s inauguration that he was considering forming his own party, which analysts speculated he might be doing to discourage senators from voting to convict him in the upcoming impeachment trial. If Trump is convicted, it could render him unableto run for office again. On Sunday, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said sources “familiar with his thinking” indicated Trump was reconsidering starting a new party, after it was “gently pointed out to him” that “threatening a third party while simultaneously threatening primaries makes no sense”.The claim that the Patriot party and Trump campaign were fundraising together appeared in a filing by Michael Joseph Gaul of Georgia to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on 22 January.Trump spokesperson Jason Miller told Axios: “We are not supportive of this effort, have nothing to do with it and only know about it through public reporting,” Miller said in a text message.Axios reported that a group called the “MAGA Patriot Party National Committee” has also falsely claimed to have a similar agreement with the Trump campaign.On Monday Trump opened an office in Florida that will handle his duties as a former US president and, according to a statement by the office, seek to further his administration’s agenda.“The Office will be responsible for managing President Trump’s correspondence, public statements, appearances, and official activities to advance the interests of the United States and to carry on the agenda of the Trump Administration through advocacy, organising, and public activism,” the statement said.In farewell remarks on his last day as president last Wednesday, Trump told supporters: “We will be back in some form.” He has made no public appearances since flying that day to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. More

The impeachment trial of Donald Trump “has to happen”, Joe Biden told CNN on Monday.While acknowledging the effect it could have on his agenda, the president said there would be “a worse effect if it didn’t happen”.Biden said he didn’t think enough Republican senators would vote for impeachment to convict, though he also said the outcome might well have been different if Trump had had six months left in his term.“The Senate has changed since I was there, but it hasn’t changed that much,” Biden said.The US House on Monday delivered its article of impeachment against Trump to the Senate, setting the stage for Trump’s second impeachment trial and the first ever Senate trial of a former US president.Trump has been charged with inciting the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January, when an assault by a violent pro-Trump mob lead to the deaths of five people.Monday’s delivery and formal reading of the charge marks the opening of the trial, although arguments are set to start the week of 8 February.Republicans and Democrats last week agreed to a two-week delay to the start of the proceedings to allow both sides to prepare arguments and give senators a fortnight to negotiate vital legislation to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus and consider Biden’s cabinet appointments.Following Trump’s impeachment in the House on 13 January, Biden had said he hoped senators would “deal with their constitutional responsibilities on impeachment while also working on the other urgent business of this nation”.At least 17 Republican senators will have to vote with all the Democrats in order to convict Trump.Although Senate Republicans have been slower to rally to Trump’s defense than during his first impeachment trial, and a handful of Republicans have signaled an openness to convicting the former president, a conviction remains an uphill battle. More

Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterJoe Biden has overturned Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the US military, earning praise from LGBTQ+ activists as he attempts to turn the page on his predecessor.But Trump continues to cast a long shadow over Washington. On Monday the House of Representatives was poised to send an impeachment article to the Senate, setting the stage for a distractive and divisive trial of the former president.Sworn in last Wednesday, Biden has signed a blitz of executive orders aiming to undo what he regards as harmful and intolerant aspects of Trump’s legacy. Trump’s transgender ban was a reversal of Barack Obama’s decision in 2016 to allow trans people to serve openly and receive medical care to transition genders.When Trump announced the ban in 2017 on Twitter, he argued that the military needed to focus on “decisive and overwhelming victory” without being burdened by “tremendous medical costs and disruption”.Biden has brought back the Obama policy. Signing an executive order in the Oval Office, he told reporters: “This is reinstating a position that previous commanders and [defense] secretaries have supported.“And what I’m doing is enabling all qualified Americans to serve their country in uniform, and essentially restoring the situation as it existed before, with transgender personnel, if qualified in every other way, can serve their government in the United States military.”Biden was joined by retired Gen Lloyd Austin, sworn in by vice-president Kamala Harris as the defense secretary on Monday, who supported overturning the ban. A report last year by the thinktank the Palm Center, co-authored by former military surgeons general, concluded that the ban had hurt military readiness.Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters: “President Biden believes that gender identity should not be a bar to military service, and that America’s strength is found in its diversity. America is stronger at home and around the world when it is inclusive.”Trump allies condemned the order. Tony Perkins, a marine veteran and the president of the conservative Family Research Council, said: “President Biden is redirecting the military’s focus from where it has been and where it belongs – fighting and winning wars. Political correctness doesn’t win wars, but the president is indulging dangerous and unproven theories that have the potential to undermine national security.”LGBTQ rights groups welcomed the measure. The Human Rights Campaign noted that there are thousands of transgender members of the US military, making the Pentagon the biggest employer of transgender people in America. Alphonso David, its president, said: “The greatest military in the world will again value readiness over bias, and qualifications over discrimination.”Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and chief executive of GLAAD, said: “The American people, military leaders, and service members themselves, all overwhelmingly support transgender military service. They know that brave trans patriots have served throughout history and continue to serve honorably and capably, defending our country.”But while executive actions afford Biden some quick wins, the new president is facing Republican opposition to his $1.9tn coronavirus relief package. And his efforts to move on from the polarising Trump era are also running into ongoing fallout from the 2020 election.On Monday, the justice department inspector general announced an investigation into whether any officials “engaged in an improper attempt” to overturn the election. This followed a New York Times report that a former assistant attorney general, Jeffrey Clark, discussed with Trump a plot to oust the acting attorney general and falsely claim widespread voter fraud.In another development, Dominion Voting Systems filed a $1.3bn defamation lawsuit against Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, accusing him of waging “a viral disinformation campaign about Dominion” made up of “demonstrably false” allegations.Trump’s election denialism culminated on 6 January in a mob storming the US Capitol, resulting in his impeachment for “incitement of insurrection”. House Democrats were due to carry the charge across the Capitol on Monday evening, a ceremonial walk to the Senate by the prosecutors who will argue their case. The trial will start on 9 February at the earliest.A two-thirds majority of the Senate would be required to convict Trump. It is now split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, meaning 17 Republicans will be required to vote against the former president. This looks increasingly unlikely as a growing number of Republican senators appear to have cooled on the idea.Senator Marco Rubio of Florida told Fox News Sunday: “I think the trial is stupid, I think it’s counterproductive … the first chance I get to vote to end this trial, I’ll do it”.Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas said he did not believe the Senate had the constitutional authority to convict Trump after he has left office, telling Fox News “the more I talk to other Republican senators, the more they’re beginning to line up” behind that argument.Even so, the 6 January riot and series of election defeats have plunged the Republican party into internecine feuds. Arizona Republicans voted on Saturday to censure Cindy McCain, the former senator Jeff Flake and governor Doug Ducey because they were perceived as disloyal to Trump.Senator Rob Portman of Ohio announced on Monday that he will not seek re-election in 2022.“We live in an increasingly polarised country where members of both parties are being pushed further to the right and further to the left, and that means too few people who are actively looking to find common ground,” he said. “This is not a new phenomenon, of course, but a problem that has gotten worse over the past few decades.” More

The US treasury is taking steps to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, as was planned under Barack Obama.Harriet Tubman was a 19th-century abolitionist and political activist who escaped slavery herself, then took part in the rescues of hundreds of enslaved people, using the network of activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad.In 2016, Obama decided Tubman should replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, leading to celebrations that an escaped slave would be honored instead of a slaveowner president.Donald Trump, who placed a portrait of Jackson, who also directed genocidal campaigns against Native Americans, prominently in the Oval Office, blocked the Obama plan.Joe Biden has now revived it, White House press secretary Jen Psaki telling reporters on Monday the treasury was “exploring ways to speed up” the process and adding: “It’s important that our money reflect the history and diversity of our country.”The president has replaced the Jackson portrait in the Oval Office with one of Benjamin Franklin, the founder who appears on the $100 bill. Such bills are known to some as “Benjamins”. Obama once said he hoped the new $20 bills would come to be known as “Tubmans”.Tubman is the subject of recent biographies and a 2019 film.In 2019, biographer Andrea Dunbar Harris told the Guardian she hoped Tubman’s presence on a new $20 bill would “drive a conversation about the value of black life, period, from slavery to the present. I don’t think we can have her on the bill without us having that conversation.” More

A row has broken out over accusations that a New York Times journalist was fired after being targeted by rightwing critics for tweeting she had “chills” at seeing Joe Biden’s plane land at Joint Base Andrews.Lauren Wolfe, who had been working as an editor at the Times, posted the message on 19 January, as Biden arrived ahead of his inauguration as president the next day.Two days later, Wolfe was let go by the Times, after her tweet was picked up by rightwing social media users and news outlets, who used Wolfe’s tweet to allege claims of media bias.Wolfe, a seasoned journalist who has written for the Guardian, said she has since been subjected to a torrent of abuse in the wake of the incident, including being followed by a photographer as she walked her dog.The New York Times responded to criticism on Sunday, after many members of the media rallied to Wolfe’s defense.“There’s a lot of inaccurate information circulating on Twitter,” Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokeswoman for the Times, told the Washington Post.“For privacy reasons we don’t get into the details of personnel matters, but we can say that we didn’t end someone’s employment over a single tweet. Out of respect for the individuals involved, we don’t plan to comment further.”The Times added that Wolfe was not a full-time employee but was instead working on a contract basis. On Sunday, The Times workers’ union, however, said it was “investigating the situation”.“We believe all our members deserve due process and just cause protections, the very rights that are fundamental to independent, objective journalism,” the TimesGuild said.CNN host Jake Tapper was among those to share details of Wolfe’s situation, while journalists Kirsten Powers and Jeremy Scahill also criticized the Times.Late to this–I can’t believe the @nyt FIRED @Wolfe321 for a few tweets! This is not a proportionate response. There’s a middle ground that doesn’t involve revoking someone’s employment. To all those who worked to get her fired: don’t ever complain about ‘cancel culture’ again.— Kirsten Powers (@KirstenPowers) January 24, 2021
I think it’s absurd and wrong that the NYT fired Lauren Wolfe. Also, does anyone remember how MSNBC’s Chris Matthews literally cried over an Obama speech, compared him to Jesus and said he “felt this thrill going up my leg” when Obama spoke? https://t.co/ZA6iZ6892t— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) January 24, 2021
The attention from the right did not stop once it emerged Wolfe was no longer working at the Times. Wolfe shared some of the abusive messages she had been sent, one of which called for her to develop cancer, while the conservative New York Post ran a series of paparazzi-style photos of Wolfe walking her dog in New York City,The Daily Mail, a rightwing British newspaper with a popular website, extrapolated from Wolfe’s tweet that there had been a “huge amount of gushing” towards Biden in the media, something the Mail said will “do nothing to restore any kind of trust in the media”.Many of Wolfe’s defenders noted that the Times did not fire reporter Glenn Thrush after multiple women accused him of sexually inappropriate behavior in 2017. The Times suspended Thrush for two months, and executive editor Dean Baquet said the journalist had “behaved in ways that we do not condone”, but Thrush kept his job. More

The US has returned to international climate action with a focus on helping the most vulnerable on the planet, Joe Biden’s climate envoy announced at a global climate summit, promising financial assistance for those afflicted by the impacts of climate breakdown.John Kerry told world leaders at the virtual Global Adaptation summit on Monday: “We’re proud to be back. We come back with humility for the absence of the last four years, and we’ll do everything in our power to make up for it.”He called on countries to “treat the crisis as the emergency that it is” by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and warned that the costs of coping with the climate change were escalating, with the US spending more than $265bn (£194bn) in one year after three storms. “We’ve reached a point where it is an absolute fact that it’s cheaper to invest in preventing damage or minimising it at least than cleaning up.”Current greenhouse gas emissions, he said, put the world on track to experience, “for the most vulnerable and poorest people on earth, fundamentally unliveable conditions, so our urgent reduction in emissions is impelled by common sense”.Kerry said the climate was a top priority for Biden. “We have a president now, thank God, who leads and tells the truth … and he knows that we have to mobilise in unprecedented ways to meet this challenge that is fast accelerating, and we have limited time to get it under control,” he said.He said the US was working on a national plan, known as a nationally determined contribution to be submitted to the UN under the Paris agreement, for emissions reductions to 2030. That would be published “as soon as practicable”, he promised.There would also be financial assistance to the poorest and most vulnerable, he promised. “We intend to make good on our climate finance pledge,” he said.Financial assistance from the US to poor countries suffering the impacts of climate-related disasters all but dried up during the Trump administration, as the US refused to continue payments into the global Green Climate Fund.The UN secretary general warned, in an interview with the Guardian last December, that without the $100bn a year in climate finance which has long been promised to flow to poor countries by 2020, the developing world would lose trust.A sizeable slice of that $100bn is expected to come from the US, directly through overseas and indirectly through development institutions and businesses.The Climate Adaptation summit, hosted by the Netherlands, included contributions from the UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres, Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel, the UK’s Boris Johnson and India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, as well as former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, and Kristalina Georgieva, head of the International Monetary Fund.Kerry warned that adaptation to the impacts of extreme weather must go along with drastic reductions in emissions. “There is no adapting to a 3C or 4C world, except for the very richest and most privileged,” he warned.“Some of the impacts are inevitable, but if we don’t act boldly and immediately by building resilience, we will see dramatic reversals in economic development for everybody, and the poorest and most vulnerable communities will pay the highest price,” he warned.Kerry called for all countries to come forward to the forthcoming UN Cop26 climate summit, in Glasgow this November, with commitments to reach net zero emissions by mid-century and national plans to reduce greenhouse gases in the next decade. More

A press secretary who tells the truth. An independent justice department that respects the rule of law. A president who doesn’t tweet conspiracy theories in the wee hours of the morning. After four dispiriting years and one near-death experience for American democracy, it would be comforting to conclude that nature is healing. Our political guardrails held. The Trump Era was nothing more than a temporary blip.But such complacency would be a terrible mistake. What we’re seeing at the dawn of the Biden presidency is not the reestablishment of norms, but the establishment of double standards.Yes, it’s commendable that the incoming Democratic administration pledges to behave responsibly, but it’s far from guaranteed that future Republican administrations will do the same. In fact, as things currently stand, it’s practically guaranteed that they won’t.Just look at a brief history of the White House ethics pledge. In 2000, when George W Bush took office, Republicans went all in on “The K Street Project,” formally integrating lobbyists into conservative policymaking and vice versa. Industries who donated to Republican candidates and hired Republican staff were given access to party leaders. Those that did not were not.The Bush Administration’s pay-to-play approach to government – and the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal which ensued – eroded public trust in government. In response, President Obama put in place the strictest ethics pledge in history. He banned lobbyists from serving in his administration, banned members of his administration from becoming lobbyists, and generally tried to block the revolving door between public service and influence peddling.This was clearly the right thing to do. Yet President Obama rarely got credit for doing the right thing. Instead, the pledge’s ambition was soon taken for granted by the Washington press corps, while its imperfections – the waivers granted to lobbyists deemed too essential to exclude from the administration – became news. Donald Trump was able to run for office on a promise to drain the swamp. After winning, he watered down the requirements he inherited. On his final day in office, he shredded his own ethics pledge, freeing former members of the Trump administration to lobby however and whomever they pleased.In between, President Trump – who served half as long as President Obama – hired more than four times as many lobbyists to serve in his administration. Yet Trump’s low standards didn’t remain newsworthy. Like Obama’s high standards, they were soon taken for granted by the press.Now the tables have turned once again. The Biden Administration has unveiled the strictest ethics pledge in history, building on President Obama’s lobbying bans by covering not just registered lobbying but also the so-called “shadow lobbying” that long served as an ethics loophole. It’s another big step forward. But it’s also a reminder that Democrats and Republicans are on two entirely different trajectories. If past is prologue, Biden will face more criticism if he fails to perfectly implement his high standards than Trump faced for having practically no standards at all. And rather than feel any political or moral obligation to follow Biden’s example, the next Republican administration will pick up right where the last president of their party left off.In other words, Democrats and Republicans are playing by different set of rules. And not just when it comes to ethics pledges and lobbying bans. We now know that many of the principles we once imagined were pillars of our democratic society – a respect for truth; a belief in the importance of a free press; the rejection of nepotism; a commitment to honor the results of elections not just in victory but in defeat – are propped up almost entirely by the good faith of politicians. And as we learned over the last four years, in American politics, bad faith is hardly in short supply.That’s why it’s not enough to usher in an administration that models good behavior. We must ensure that we create high standards that apply to everyone.That starts with changing political incentives that currently punish leaders who try to act responsibly and reward those who don’t. Some members of the press will surely be tempted to return to their own version of normalcy – one where Obama’s tan suit is a scandal, Joe Biden’s Peloton is a political liability, and it’s generally assumed that Republicans will behave like arsonists while Democrats behave like adults. Yes, the press should hold the Biden Administration accountable. But it would do the American public a disservice to pretend the last four years didn’t happen, or to take it for granted that most Republican politicians will behave like arsonists and most Democratic politicians will try to behave like adults.Nor is it just the press – and other, similarly nonpartisan institutions – who should do more to prevent the emergence of double standards. Democrats currently control both houses of Congress. They should use that control to codify norms into laws. In past Congresses, for example, Senator Elizabeth Warren has put forward a bill that contains and expands on the provisions in the Obama and Biden ethics pledges. Similar bills could make it harder to oppose the certification of a fair and free election, use the justice department as a political weapon, or rely on corrupt dark money to finance campaigns. Most important, legislation can accomplish what relying on politicians’ good faith cannot – constraining the behavior not only of Democrats, but of Republicans as well.If we don’t take this opportunity to restore the norms that allow our political system to function, we may not get another chance. Perhaps the Republican Party, emboldened by Trumpism and empowered by gerrymandering and voter suppression, will develop a more strategic and successful model of authoritarianism. Or perhaps a new generation of Democrats, convinced that our institutions won’t act to protect their own bedrock principles, will decide that abandoning those principles is the only way to ensure Trumpism doesn’t reemerge.If such a race to the bottom comes to define American politics, the entire country will lose. But that’s ultimately why the beginning of the Biden Era is a moment of a relief. We haven’t turned the page on an awful chapter of American history. But finally, together, we can. For the first time in four years, America’s most powerful institutions are run almost entirely by people who care about our democracy and want to see it survive. They must make the most of this moment, not just to clear the low bar set by the previous administration, but to raise the bar for future ones before it’s too late. More