US Politics

Bernie Sanders is turning a meme based on the mittens he wore to Joe Biden’s inauguration into a money-making opportunity – to benefit programmes like Meals on Wheels in a time of spiralling food insecurity.At the US Capitol on Wednesday, the independent senator from Vermont was pictured wearing chunky knitted mittens, sitting cross-legged on a folding chair, socially distanced from other guests, hunched against the cold.The image was soon spliced into a billion social media pictures and videos, the be-mittened democratic socialist appearing from Yalta to the ranks of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the famous potters’ wheel scene in Ghost. In Wisconsin, one man even adapted a snow sculpture of the Lincoln Memorial, a pillar of American democracy, to depict Sanders and his mittens instead.The Vermont second-grade teacher who made the mittens out of an old sweater and recycled plastic bottles and offered them on Etsy soon announced she had sold out.“There’s no possible way I could make 6,000 pairs of mittens,” Jen Ellis told Jewish Insider, “and every time I go into my email, another several hundred people have emailed me. I hate to disappoint people, but the mittens, they’re one of a kind and they’re unique and, sometimes in this world, you just can’t get everything you want.”On Sunday, a chuckling Sanders welcomed his mittens’ notoriety and described how he wanted to put it to work.“Not only are we having fun,” the 79-year-old told CNN’s State of the Union, “what we’re doing here in Vermont, is we’re going to be selling around the country sweatshirts and T-shirts and all of the money that’s going to be raised, which I expect will be a couple of million dollars, will be going to programs like Meals on Wheels that feed low-income senior citizens.”Food insecurity under the coronavirus pandemic has become a serious problem, among Biden’s targets in his first days as president.“So,” Sanders added, “it turns out actually it’s a good thing, not only fun.”On the senator’s website on Sunday morning, a $45 “Chairman Sanders” crewneck sweatshirt featuring the inauguration image was itself sold out. More

On Sunday afternoon, the US will reach the 100th hour of Joe Biden’s presidency. Already, there has been a blitz of executive actions and a bewildering pace of change. Four years after Donald Trump set about undoing Barack Obama’s legacy, Obama’s vice-president appears to be returning the gesture with interest.Here are the key developments:UnityBiden’s inaugural address was a soulful plea to come together after four years of division.“This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge and unity is the path forward,” he said, promising to be a president for all Americans.The pared-down ceremony at the US Capitol, stormed by a mob just two weeks earlier, was a bipartisan affair that included outgoing vice-president Mike Pence. Trump, who falsely claimed he won the election, was conspicuously absent.ClimateBiden lost no time in rejoining the Paris climate agreement, earning Republican criticism. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said the move indicated Biden was “more interested in the views of the citizens of Paris than in the jobs of the citizens of Pittsburgh”, contending it would destroy thousands of jobs.The president also revoked the Keystone XL oil pipeline permit and instructed the Environmental Protection Agency and transportation department to reestablish fuel efficiency mandates weakened by Trump.CoronavirusBiden pledged a “wartime undertaking” to combat a pandemic in which more than 400,000 have died. He released a 198-page Covid-19 strategy and signed 10 executive orders and other directives.These included a mandate requiring anyone visiting a federal building or land or traveling on a plane, train, ship or intercity bus to wear a mask. There are stricter protocols at the White House, to avoid any repeat of Trump’s “superspreader” events.Biden ordered agencies to speed up manufacturing and delivery of personal protective equipment, directed officials to provide guidance on the reopening of schools and reversed Trump’s decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization.Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, returned to the White House briefing room after months of near banishment. “The idea that you can get up here and talk about what the evidence, what the science is and let the science speak, it is somewhat of a liberating feeling,” he said.EconomyBefore taking office, Biden sent Congress a proposed $1.9tn stimulus package. That remains the priority but he has ordered actions including a 15% boost to a programme for families whose children miss meals due to school closures. Nearly 30 million last week said they did not have enough food, according to the White House.Biden is seeking to extend moratoriums on evictions and foreclosures. He also wants a longer pause on student loan payments and interest. In a preview of demands from the left, congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted: “OK, now let’s cancel them.”ImmigrationBiden sent Congress a bill overhauling the system and offering an eight-year pathway to citizenship for nearly 11m people without legal status. The president told the homeland security secretary to preserve and strengthen Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), which prevents the deportation of undocumented young people brought to America as children.He reversed an order excluding undocumented people from the census and ended an immigration ban on several Muslim-majority countries, an infamous Trump policy that press secretary Jen Psaki said was “rooted in religious animus and xenophobia”.Biden halted funding or construction of Trump’s wall at the US-Mexico border and cancelled the so-called “national emergency use” to divert billions of dollars to the wall. Trump proposed the wall when he launched his campaign in June 2015 and it remained his signature issue.Racial justiceKamala Harris was the first woman of colour to be sworn in as vice-president. “Don’t tell me things can’t change,” Biden said in his inaugural address. The breakout star of the ceremony was Amanda Gorman, a 22-year-old African American poet.[embedded content]Biden issued an executive order on advancing racial equity and support for underserved communities, described by Psaki as a “whole-of-government effort to advance racial equity and root out systemic racism from federal programmes and institutions”. Notably, it rescinded a Trump order that blocked federal agencies from offering diversity and inclusion training involving critical race theory.Team BidenThe Senate confirmed Avril Haines as director of national intelligence, the first woman to lead the US intelligence community, and retired general Lloyd Austin as defense secretary, the first African American to run the Pentagon.Biden has leaned heavily on Obama alumni and his cabinet will not include progressive lions such as senators Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren – in part because their replacements in a 50-50 Senate would be nominated by Republican governors. But the Democrats have shifted left on economics, immigration and other issues. Biden’s pick for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for example, is Rohit Chopra, a Warren ally.Brian Deese, director of the national economic council, told reporters: “When you’re at a moment that is as precarious as the one we find ourselves in, the risk of doing too little, the risk of undershooting far outweighs the risk of doing too much.”Truth and transparencyIn four years, Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims, according to the Washington Post. On Wednesday Biden promised to “always level with you”. Psaki underlined his commitment is to “bring transparency and truth back to government,” during a restored daily press briefing light years removed from the lies and insults of Trump.The west wingLike his predecessors, Biden gave the Oval Office a makeover.In: a deep blue rug last used by Bill Clinton, a portrait of Benjamin Franklin and busts including civil rights activists César Chávez and Rosa Parks and former attorney general Robert Kennedy.Out: a red button that Trump reportedly used to summon a butler when he wanted a Diet Coke; a portrait of President Andrew Jackson; and a bust of Winston Churchill, triggering a media kerfuffle. Asked about its removal, Psaki replied sarcastically: “Oh, such an important question.” More

Only Frank Underwood could amass as much power in such a short space of time. Nearly eight years after Netflix used House of Cards as the launch of its global empire, the streaming service announced last week that it now had more than 200 million subscribers. The pandemic has hastened the company’s transformation from a debt-laden digital upstart into an essential part of the TV landscape in homes across the world.In 2013, when Netflix’s first original series made its debut, the company had 30 million (mostly US) subscribers. This was six years after it moved from being a DVD-by-post business to a streaming pioneer. Since then it has added 170 million subscribers in more than 190 countries and its pandemic-fuelled results last week sent Netflix’s market value to an all-time high of $259bn.Last year proved to be the best in the company’s history, even as a new wave of deep-pocketed rivals attempt to deprive it of its streaming crown. Accustomed to operating in battle mode, Netflix added a record 37 million new subscribers as lockdown prompted viewers to alleviate housebound cabin fever with fare including The Crown, Bridgerton and The Queen’s Gambit.Last week it reported that in 2020 the amount it earned from subscribers exceeded what it spent – to the tune of $1.9bnBut Netflix’s pioneering low-price, binge-watching approach to driving growth has come at a cost. Year after year the need to spend billions on ever-increasing numbers of films and TV shows in order to keep and attract subscribers has weighed on its balance sheet, if not its share price. With a Netflix subscription a fraction of the cost of a traditional pay-TV service, average revenue per user is low. This is great for growth but means the company has to keep on topping up its content budget to fulfil its binge-watching promise to fans. A few billion here and there has spiralled to $16bn in long-term debt and a further $19bn in “obligations” – essentially payments for content spread out over a number of years.Analysts have been split over Netflix’s grow-now-pay-for-it-later strategy, but the company finally appears to have proved the naysayers wrong. There was a symbolic announcement in its results last week: it reported that in 2020, free cashflow was positive – which means that the amount it earns from subscribers exceeds what it spends on content, marketing and other costs – to the tune of $1.9bn.Part of the reason for this was that Netflix’s content spend fell – from $14bn to $12bn – as a result of production stoppages caused by lockdowns, but it was a turning point nevertheless. It has taken 23 years since its humble beginnings as a DVD rental company in California for the Netflix machine to reach the point of sustainability.The firm’s decision in 2013 to invest heavily in original productions has proved critical – and prescient. It sensed, correctly, that its success would prompt the suppliers that it was licensing shows from to eventually keep them for their own services. In the past 18 months, HBO Max, Sky-owner Comcast’s Peacock and AppleTV+ have joined longer-term rival Amazon Prime Video in vying for subscribers.Reed Hastings, Netflix’s co-chief executive, acknowledges this second wave in the streaming wars, particularly noting the “super-impressive” performance of Disney+, which has become the third global force in streaming behind Amazon. In just 14 months since its launch, the service, powered by franchises including Star Wars TV spin-off The Mandalorian, Marvel films and Frozen 2, has amassed 87 million subscribers four years sooner than forecast. Last month, Walt Disney+ announced a doubling of its content budget and tripled its forecast of subscriber numbers by 2024.However, new rivals have yet to dent the dominance of Netflix, which reported adding 8.5 million subscribers in the fourth quarter, and revealed that 500 TV titles were in the works and a record 71 films would premiere this year. Some doubters had raised concerns that Netflix’s debt-fuelled growth was a financial house of cards. But its foundations look solid now.Nissan’s ‘edge’ over rivals is no vote for BrexitLeaving the EU without a deal would have been an act of economic self-sabotage nearly unrivalled by a developed economy. Carmakers’ relief that a deal was reached on Christmas Eve was palpable. Nissan’s glee became clear last week, with chief operating officer Ashwani Gupta repeatedly declaring that the Brexit deal had given the Japanese carmaker a “competitive advantage”.Nissan had looked through the complex new rules of origin governing trade between the UK and the EU. Parts and finished cars that cross the Channel will not attract tariffs if a certain proportion of their components are from either the UK or the EU. Nissan’s cars already comply with the rules.Crucially, this applies to high-value batteries, which a partner company builds in Sunderland, in a factory next door to Nissan’s. Other companies are not so well-placed and must rely instead on imports from east Asia. For them the Brexit deal has started a scramble to secure batteries from Europe – if they want to sell into the UK – or hope that untested UK companies can build gigafactories to supply them.However, the Japanese carmaker’s statement should not be mistaken for a “vote of confidence”, as Boris Johnson managed to do. Gupta acknowledged that the UK’s departure from the EU had brought new costs, though these were “peanuts” for a company of Nissan’s scale. They may not be so negligible for exporting entrepreneurs, a breed that will probably become rarer as non-tariff barriers increase for would-be traders with the EU.Furthermore, “competitive advantage” is a double-edged compliment. Nissan will gain on UK and EU rivals which do not source batteries locally. Even if it is less of a burden than those carried by competitors, a handicap – in this case increased trade friction with the UK’s biggest market – is still a handicap.A new president is not a panaceaIt would be a mistake to allow the relief that has accompanied Joe Biden’s victory in the US presidential election to become something close to euphoria and, consequently, freight the new US president with expectations that are unachievable.The next decade is looking troubled and fractious even now that Donald Trump’s hand is no longer on the tiller of the world’s largest and most powerful economy. From a global perspective, there is the assessment of climate economist Lord Stern that the next 10 years will be crucial if we are to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.China, for 30 years a convenient supplier of low-cost goods to the global economy, is becoming more authoritarian and looking to use its spheres of influence in Asia and Africa to quell complaints by international bodies about the way it treats Uighur Muslims and Hong Kong protesters. To make matters worse, populations in the west and in China are ageing and struggling to provide a decent standard of living for younger members of society.In the UK, Brexit reintroduces a welter of red tape into the trading arrangements this country has with its biggest commercial partner, the EU, and will depress average household incomes over a long period. So despite the relief in many corners of the globe that greeted Biden’s inauguration, there is reason to worry.But there are grounds for hope too. The pressure to address the climate emergency is growing rapidly and politicians all over the world are at last taking notice. The 26th UN climate change conference in Glasgow, scheduled for November, could mark a seismic shift in action. And Biden showed how inclusive he plans to be with his roster of inauguration acts, from the stalwart Republican country singer Garth Brooks to 22-year-old African American poet Amanda Gorman.It was telling that Biden said he wanted to build bridges. It will be difficult, but on the issue of climate change, if on nothing else, that must include China. More

Last Wednesday in Washington was magnificent – the alchemy of a great republic’s democratic rituals, inspiring sentiments that did not fall into schmaltz, and the best of pop culture. Then there was the small matter of getting rid of the perpetrator of the Big Lie and welcoming a president who promised a new dawn, personified in Joe Biden’s dignity and decency.“Democracy has prevailed,” he declared. “There is truth and there are lies told for power and profit… each of us has a duty and responsibility to defend the truth and to defeat the lies.” It was the more extraordinary because it was all happening in the place threatened only a fortnight earlier by the ex-president’s menacing mob. America has shown us its best and worst and reminded us why it is such a compelling place.Absent from the celebrations was a large part of the Republican party, which, far from coming to terms with the extent of the deceit and deranged narcissism of their ex-president, was still holding on to his lie that the election was stolen. Amazingly, more than two-thirds of Republicans in the outgoing House of Representatives bowed to that view, voting not to certify the result only hours after the mob had been dispersed.The consensus is that this bodes ill for Biden and the US: the country needs the Republican party to break with Trump and recognise his lies. Until they do, America is a land divided. That is true, but it needs enough of the party’s base to believe the truth before enough Republican leaders will rupture their relationship with the master of Twitter invective and his mesmerising hold on his cult following. The liberal consensus on this prospect, however, is too pessimistic. Note that not one leading Republican turned up at Andrews Air Force Base to wave Trump’s plane goodbye. Republican leaders will openly turn on Trump if Biden and his team can drive inroads into the less cultish element of their support, so confronting them with a potential political death spiral. Here, the combination of beating the pandemic, the New Deal scale of Biden’s economic plans, along with the breadth of his support, including from donors fleeing the Republicans, offers him potential winning cards.Witness his surefooted moves in the first two days. The breathtaking scale and speed with which the US doubled economic production to support the war effort after Pearl Harbor was 80 years ago, but the cluster of Biden’s executive orders on Covid is an eerie reminder that when the US is minded it can mobilise like no other nation.It is now so minded. Biden is directing a “full-scale, wartime” Covid strategy, for example, to use the Defense Production Act to co-opt and direct the private sector to produce whatever is needed on the scale it is needed, from vaccine to PPE equipment. Masks are to be worn in federal buildings and on interstate public transport; incoming travellers will be required to quarantine; 100m vaccinations are to be rolled out by April.His Covid taskforce consists of can-do talents. Science is to rule: the top geneticist Eric Lander is to become his chief scientific adviser with cabinet rank. And to cap it all, rejecting Trump’s vaccine nationalism and recognising that to defeat the pandemic means good public health in Manaus or Mumbai as much as at home, the US is to rejoin the World Health Organization. The same reasoning informs Biden’s rejoining the Paris climate change accords; there is no point developing a national strategy for aggressive decarbonisation without the rest of the world acting in parallel.The US is rebuilding its multilateral bridges – expect the EU to be a crucial ally. Brexit Britain and its trade deal are second-order irrelevancies. Biden’s promise to deliver 2bn vaccinations internationally is an astonishing stroke; the 2 billion recipients will be the west’s best ally against the failing soft power ambitions of China – a foreign policy coup in 24 hours. Equally good moves were to freeze building the wall on the Mexican border and to rescind Trump’s “Muslim” travel ban as racist and discriminatory.The same change in values underpins domestic economic policy. A national emergency requires an emergency response, argues Biden, hence there are already discussions with Congress over a $1.9tn package to boost the incomes of the less well-off so hard hit by Covid. Beyond that, there are ambitious targets for a makeover of the US’s decaying infrastructure and to build a stakeholder economy – qualifying the privileged interest of shareholders, promoting the pursuit of purpose over profit and strengthening trade unions. Biden is a self-avowed “union man”.This is radical centrism. Biden’s values are there for all to see: he has already warned White House insiders he will have no truck with anybody who treats colleagues with disrespect; his cabinet’s diversity is in plain sight; his America is the majority and it is willing him on.Thus his success is likely, if beset by risk, and it could transform British politics. For Brexit is our Trump. Instead of the opposition conniving in the belief that the best that can be done is to improve the terms of the “deal” over many years ahead, the political task is to assemble a similarly broad coalition to Biden’s and oppose Brexit in the same terms. It is founded in the same Trumpite lies and disrespect for truth, it poses the same threat to decent values, the same isolation, the same rightwing dead end – and offers economic stagnation to boot.Leading Labour politicians, shattered by electoral defeat, have lost all self-confidence, their world narrowing to winning back former “red wall” seats. Biden demands a step change in ambition. Don’t resile from your beliefs – fight for them. What was done against Trump can be done against Brexit. Labour should heed Biden’s success: the US and its radical centrist show the way.• Will Hutton is an Observer columnist More

US media organisations are taking steps to mirror Joe Biden’s gender-balanced cabinet appointments, with at least six major news networks assigning women to lead White House coverage.Since Biden’s inauguration last week, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, the public television station PBS and the Washington Post have assigned chief reporting duties to women.The list includes women of colour, including PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor and NBC’s Kristen Welker, who last October became the first black woman to moderate a general-election presidential debate in almost 30 years, and kept it on track in a fashion that eluded male debate moderators.“It is clear that diversity in all forms including in gender and race is necessary to tell the stories of our generation in the most accurate and fair way,” Alcindor told CNN.US political commentator Keli Goff told The Observer: “If the events of the last year have shown us anything‎, it’s that it is essential to have institutions of power that reflect our nation’s diversity, and for newsrooms that cover those institutions to reflect our nation’s diversity as well.” “The increased diversity of the White House press corps is an important step forward for journalism and for ensuring our leaders are held accountable when it comes to blind spots they may have,” Goff added.The selections mark a turnaround for the White House press corps, which has traditionally been dominated by men.Rare exceptions include the trailblazing Helen Thomas, who served as White House correspondent for UPI and AP over 10 administrations before retiring aged 89 in 2010.The makeup of the press corps reflects the new administration. Biden’s communications team is fully staffed by women, including his press secretary, Jen Psaki, who has promised consistent weekday briefings.For the media, assigning more women to cover the White House comes at a pivotal moment. A report last week from the communications firm Edelman described a “raging infodemic” that has driven trust in all news sources to record lows.The study found that trust in traditional media stands at just 53%, an eight percentage point drop globally since 2019. Trust in social media stands at 35%, a drop from 43% over the same period.“Without a trusted leadership source to look to, people don’t know where or who to get reliable information from,” the report commented.At least in the cramped White House briefing room, the burden of correcting the decline in trust now falls largely on the shoulders of women.“A generation ago, being the only woman was perhaps a blessing – I really stood out from the crowd,” Ann Compton, a former ABC News White House correspondent, told CNN.“The day will come – should come – when it is not news that the majority in the public eye in any profession is female,” Compton added. More

Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterWhen the back wheels of Air Force One finally lifted off the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday bound for Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s White House-in-exile in West Palm Beach, cheers erupted in millions of households across America and around the globe.Four years of screeching tweets and ugly divisiveness were over, and for many it felt like the hope of a calmer, more civil world had swept in.In one respect, though, the acrid, bitter smell of Trump continues to hang in the air: he left the presidency having never conceded that he lost the election to Joe Biden.Trump’s decision to shun Biden’s inauguration – the first outgoing president to do so in 152 years – can be explained away as the hissy fit of a sore loser. But there’s a darker side to it. By forgoing the ritual of the peaceful handover of power that has been a pillar of American democracy since the country’s founding, he leaves a black cloud over the incoming administration.Trump’s refusal formally to pass the baton means that the terrible events of 6 January are unfinished business. The armed mob of Trump supporters and white supremacists who stormed the Capitol Building, fired up by Trump’s lies about the “stolen election” and hunting for members of Congress to lynch, still have their marching orders. It is a legacy, made manifest on inauguration day by the 7ft non-scalable fences and the war zone-like presence of thousands of national guard troops in Washington DC.As Trump legacies go, this one could prove much harder to unpick than those he left behind on the pandemic, immigration or the climate crisis that Biden tried to reverse with the flick of a pen on day one.The legacy of the “stolen election”, by contrast, has the potential to endure. Michael Chertoff, the former homeland security secretary under George W Bush, told the Guardian recently that domestic terrorism inspired directly by Trump “is going to be the security challenge for the foreseeable future”.Current intelligence chiefs agree. They are primed to have to deal with a lasting threat posed by Trump’s ongoing refusal publicly to accept the will of the American people.An intelligence bulletin obtained by the Washington Post that was written just a week before the inauguration spelled out the intelligence community’s anxieties. The memo concluded that “amplified perceptions of fraud surrounding the outcome of the general election … very likely will lead to an increase in DVE [domestic violent extremist] violence.”At the center of this new domestic terrorism threat is the seed of doubt that Trump has implanted in the minds of millions of Americans that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged”. It is the “animating lie”, as the former homeland security official Juliette Kayyem has put it, that drove the mob to storm the US Capitol and that now hangs in the air like a toxic gas.Trump’s campaign to overturn the results of the presidential election amounted to a “big lie” familiar to those who study demagogic propaganda. Embedded within it are many of the core elements of what the Yale historian Timothy Snyder has called Trump’s post-truth, “pre-fascism”.The lie was simple – able to be repeated and shared on TV and social media in six short words: “They stole the election from me.” That “they” was important too – by signaling a clear enemy, it allowed his supporters to direct their frustration and anger at identifiable targets.Trump lashed out repeatedly at the media, which he denounced as the “enemy of the people”. He attacked “cowardly” Republican election officials who refused not to do their jobs, his own vice-president, and finally the heart of US democracy, Congress itself.For Bandy X Lee, a forensic psychiatrist and violence expert, there was another key aspect to the “stop the steal” big lie – it was rooted in paranoia. In her analysis, paranoia, perceiving threat where none exists, is the most common symptom to cause violent behaviour.“The fact that Trump actually believes himself to have been wronged and persecuted, or has paranoid ideations, spreads and finds resonance in paranoia that already exists in the population. That will increase the chances of violence,” Lee said.As any student of tyrannies will tell you, for big lies to work they have to be repeated and repeated. Trump certainly fulfilled that requirement. He has been working assiduously to spread his animating lie for years. Consider the headline in the New Yorker, “Trump and the truth: the ‘rigged’ election”. The article beneath it reported that Trump was “trying to delegitimize a national election even while campaigning for the presidency” and that his ploy was working – about half of his supporters thought the election was cooked.That New Yorker piece was published on 8 October 2016.Trump’s efforts have paid even greater dividends in this election cycle. The most recent opinion polls suggest that more than a third of the total US electorate still believe that Trump won the November election, a proportion that rises above 70% when you ask Republicans. Nor is there any sign such a stunningly large number of Americans who bought Trump’s make-believe is on the wane. As Snyder wrote in the New York Times, “the lie outlasts the liar”.Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Trump’s sleight of hand is that he presented himself in the cloak of the protector of American democracy precisely in order to undermine American democracy. He invoked patriotism in order to legitimize the ultimate act of sedition – overthrowing the electoral will of the American people.Fashioning yourself as a patriot makes it easier to justify, in your own mind, participating in acts that might lead to violenceThat is what most concerns David Gomez, a former FBI national security executive who spent many years countering domestic terrorism. He fears that Trump, by wrapping his actions in the cloth of patriotism, has given his blessing to violent action that could linger beyond his presidency.“This is what makes this particular moment in time more dangerous,” he told the Guardian. “Fashioning yourself as a patriot makes it easier to justify, in your own mind, participating in acts that might lead to violence.”The patriotic rhetoric acts like an ethical get-out clause, Gomez said. “It provides the average person a face-saving scenario to participate. ‘Oh, I’m not a bad guy, I’m a good guy acting as a patriot to save my country.’”Into this mix has been poured the even more poisonous influence of far-right and white supremacist groups, motivated by racial animus and wielding their Confederate flags inside the Capitol building. Trump made repeated overtures to them throughout his presidency, from his “you had very fine people, on both sides” comment about the 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, to his notorious invitation to the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”.White supremacists have enthusiastically heeded his call. For them, this was the break for which they had long been waiting, the welcome gesture that would usher them into the fold.Shortly before the storming of the Capitol, the Three Percenters, an extreme anti-government militia network, put out a statement in which they aligned themselves overtly with Trump’s “stolen election”. They name-checked Ted Cruz, the Republican senator from Texas who was complicit in Trump’s big lie, as well as the ever more erratic Rudy Giuliani and the former national security adviser and pardoned criminal Michael Flynn.“We are ready to enter into battle with General Flynn leading the charge,” the group said.This all presents the incoming administration with a bilious soup of disaffected Trump supporters and their white supremacist allies hooked on the idea that Biden is an illegitimate president. Given the millions of Americans who have bought into the fantasy, should even a tiny fraction of them harbor violent aspirations or find themselves drawn to the newly elevated white supremacist groups, that would give rise to a national security challenge of monumental proportions.Biden himself has vowed to tackle the trouble head-on. In his inauguration speech he addressed the threat directly, talking about the “rise in political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat”.But the new president may find himself hamstrung by the relative lack of attention that has been paid up until now to the phenomenon.Some 80% of the FBI’s counter-terrorism budget goes on fighting international terrorism, and only 20% on domesticLast year Chris Wray, the FBI director who Biden intends to keep in post, told Congress that “racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists” were the main source of ideological killings, overshadowing international jihadism that has dominated US intelligence thinking for 20 years.Yet the way the FBI dishes out its resources is the exact opposite. Some 80% of its counter-terrorism budget goes on fighting international terrorism, and only 20% on domestic.Gomez, the former FBI supervisor, said that any residual sluggishness on the part of the FBI in refocusing its sights on far-right violence will have vanished on 6 January. The storming of the Capitol was a “call to action for the FBI as it showed that there are individuals and groups within these political movements that are violent and willing to act out their frustrations and ideations in public”.The FBI’s immediate priority, Gomez said, was likely to be on identifying the main conspirators behind the attack. “The FBI are going to focus on those groups that wore color-coordinated clothing at the Capitol, used communications and tried to organize specific actions,” he said.The longer-term ambition will be to flip many of the more than 150 suspected rioters who have already been arrested and turn them into informants who can act as the feds’ eyes and ears. In all, Gomez expects a “paradigm shift” within the FBI away from international terrorism towards far-right and white supremacist domestic terrorism similar in scale and significance to the seismic change that followed 9/11.As they scramble to make up for lost time, federal agencies will face some daunting obstacles. How do you begin to identify individuals who have the capability of violence when they are embedded in such a vast mass of American citizenry?As the Atlantic has pointed out, the mob that breached the Capitol was full of “respectable people” – business owners, real-estate brokers, Republican local and state legislators. The only indication that they would take part in a rabble that beat a police officer to death was their shared belief that they have, in the Atlantic’s words, an “inviolable right to rule”.Also among the mob were current and former law enforcement officers and at least six people with military links, signaling what may become the largest challenge of all – the fact that an unknown number of heavily armed and weapons-trained servants of the federal government are indirectly or even actively engaged in white supremacy. That’s a problem that long precedes Trump, but that has been supercharged by his presidency.Here, too, what amounts to a crisis in American society has been largely overlooked. Two years ago, the Department of Defense revealed that out of almost 2 million serving military personnel only 18 had been disciplined or discharged for extremist acts over the previous five years.The growing threat of rightwing nationalism in the military has been ignored, it hasn’t been emphasized enoughSo when security chiefs in charge of protecting dignitaries at Biden’s inauguration realized they had a fundamental problem, and called in the FBI to vet some 25,000 national guard troops brought to Washington for the event, they were acting exceptionally late in the day.“The growing threat of rightwing nationalism in the military has been ignored, it hasn’t been emphasized enough,” Jeff McCausland said.McCausland, a retired army colonel and former dean of the US Army War College, said that only now was the scale of far-right infiltration in the military being properly assessed. “Throughout the Trump administration, there was no focus on this problem because it did not fit their narrative that the threat was coming from the left.”Asked whether the Pentagon was finally taking the matter seriously, McCausland replied: “Their words suggest they are stepping up the effort. Let’s see how well they have done in a year.”Working in Biden’s favor will be the hope that with Trump off the scene – banished both from Washington and from social media – the allure of the stolen election myth will fade. “Now that Trump has been removed, much of his impact will dissipate,” said Bandy X Lee.She added that it would remain important that Trump is discredited and disempowered to curtail his pull. “Prosecution and firm boundaries will be critical to keeping his influence under check.”On Monday the article of impeachment against Trump for “incitement of insurrection” will be handed to the US Senate, and his second trial will begin in the week of 8 February. But the chances of conviction look slim. For now at least the nation remains on alert. The big lie outlasts the liar, suspended in air and obscuring Biden’s sun. More

The sudden lurch from Trump to Biden is generating vertigo all over Washington, including the so-called fourth branch of government – chief executives and their army of lobbyists.Notwithstanding Biden’s ambitious agenda, dozens of giant corporations have said they will no longer donate to the 147 members of Congress who objected to the certification of Biden electors on the basis of Trump’s lies about widespread fraud, which rules out most Republicans on the Hill.After locking down Trump’s account, social media giants like Twitter and Facebook are policing instigators of violence and hate, which hobbles Republican lawmakers trying to appeal to Trump voters.As a result of moves like these, chief executives are being hailed – and hailing themselves – as guardians of democracy. The New York Times praises business leaders for seeking “stability and national unity”. Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Airlines, says: “Our voice is seen as more important than ever.” A recent study by Edelman finds the public now trusts business more than nonprofits, the government or the media.For years, big corporations have assaulted democracy with big money, drowning out the voices of ordinary AmericansGive me a break. For years, big corporations have been assaulting democracy with big money, drowning out the voices and needs of ordinary Americans and fueling much of the anger and cynicism that opened the door to Trump in the first place.Their assault hasn’t been as dramatic as the Trump thugs who stormed the Capitol, and it’s entirely legal – although more damaging over the long term.A study published a few years ago by two of America’s most respected political scientists, Princeton professor Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page of Northwestern, concluded that the preferences of the average American “have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically nonsignificant impact upon public policy”. Instead, lawmakers respond almost exclusively to the moneyed interests – those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns.The capture of government by big business has infuriated average Americans whose paychecks have gone nowhere even as the stock market has soared.The populist movements that fueled both Bernie Sanders and Trump began in the 2008 financial crisis when Wall Street got bailed out and no major bank executive went to jail, although millions of ordinary people lost their jobs, savings and homes.So now, in wake of Trump’s calamitous exit and Biden’s ascension, we’re to believe chief executives care about democracy?“No one thought they were giving money to people who supported sedition,” explained Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase and chairman of the Business Roundtable, referring to the disgraced Republicans.Yet Dimon has been a leader of the more insidious form of sedition. He piloted the corporate lobbying campaign for the Trump tax cut, deploying a vast war chest of corporate donations.For more than a decade Dimon has driven Wall Street’s charge against stricter bank regulation, opening bipartisan doors in the Capitol with generous gifts from the Street. (Dimon calls himself a Democrat.)When Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg shut Trump’s Facebook account, he declared: “You just can’t have a functioning democracy without a peaceful transition of power.”Where was Zuckerberg’s concern for a “functioning democracy” when he amplified Trump’s lies for four years?After taking down Trump’s Twitter account, Jack Dorsey expressed discomfort about “the power an individual or corporation has over a part of the global public conversation”.Spare me. Dorsey has fought off all attempts to limit Twitter’s power over the “global conversation”. He shuttered Trump only after Democrats secured the presidency and control of the Senate.If they were committed to democracy, CEOs would permanently cease corporate donations to all candidatesLook, I’m glad CEOs are penalizing the 147 Republican seditionists and that big tech is starting to police social media content.But don’t confuse the avowed concerns of these CEOs about democracy with democracy itself. They aren’t answerable to democracy. At most, they’re accountable to big shareholders and institutional investors who don’t give a fig as long as profits keep rolling in. These CEOs could do a U-turn tomorrow.If they were committed to democracy, CEOs would permanently cease corporate donations to all candidates, close their Pacs, stop giving to secretive “dark money” groups and discourage donations by their executives.They’d stop placing ads in media that have weaponized disinformation – including Fox News, Infowars, Newsmax and websites affiliated with rightwing pundits. Social media giants would start acting like publishers and take responsibility for what they promulgate.If corporate America were serious about democracy it would throw its weight behind the “For the People Act”, the first bills of the new Congress, offering public financing of elections among other reforms.Don’t hold your breath.Joe Biden intends to raise corporate taxes, increase the minimum wage, break up big tech and strengthen labor unions.The fourth branch is already amassing a war chest for the fight. More

A Texas man who participated in the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January has been charged with threatening to “assassinate” the New York Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.Garret Miller of Texas faces five criminal charges arising from his participation in the pro-Trump riot, including “knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted buildings or grounds without lawful authority” and making threats.According to court documents, he allegedly tweeted: “Assassinate AOC.”He is also charged with violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, obstructing or impeding any official proceeding, and certain acts during civil disorder.Asked for comment on Saturday, Miller’s lawyer, Clint Broden, said in an email: “The charges are based on an inappropriate comment made in the heat of the moment on Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitter feed.”On Friday night, Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive Democratic congresswoman from New York, responded to news that Miller had been arrested, and had posted a selfie to Facebook, writing that he “just wanted to incriminate myself a little lol”.Ocasio-Cortez tweeted: “Well, you did!”She added: “On one hand you have to laugh, and on the other know that the reason [the Capitol rioters] were this brazen is because they thought they were going to succeed.”Miller is also alleged to have said an officer who shot and killed a Trump supporter inside the Capitol “deserves to die” and would not “survive long” because it’s “huntin[g] season”.Broden said: “Mr Miller regrets the actions he took in a misguided effort to show his support for former President Trump. He has the full support of his family and has always been a law abiding citizen.“His social media comments reflect very ill-considered political hyperbole in very divided times and will certainly not be repeated in the future. He looks forward to putting all of this behind him.”The criminal complaint filed in Washington DC federal court lists example after example of social media posts apparently placing Miller on Capitol grounds, participating in the riot.Several hours after the insurrection, authorities allege, Twitter user @garretamiller publicly posted a video from within the Capitol captioned: “From inside congress”.“In examining Miller’s Facebook account, there are many posts relating to his involvement in criminal activities at the Capitol,” officials wrote.On 2 January, Miller allegedly wrote on Facebook: “I am about to drive across the country for this trump shit. On Monday … Some crazy shit going to happen this week. Dollar might collapse … civil war could start … not sure what to do in DC.”On 3 January, Miller allegedly said he was bringing to Washington “a grappling hook and rope and a level-3 vest. Helmets mouth guard and bump cap”. The last time he was in Washington for a pro-Trump rally, Miller allegedly added, he “had a lot of guns” with him.Miller also seems to have sought to set the record straight about participants in the riot. When someone wrote on Twitter that “the people storming The Capitol are not Patriots. They are PAID INFILTRATORS”, Miller allegedly responded: “Nah we stormed it. We where [sic] gentle. We where [sic] unarmed. We knew what had to be done.”In a 15 January Facebook chat, Miller allegedly wrote that he was “happy to make death threats so I been just off the rails tonight lol” and was “happy to be banned now [from Twitter]”. Asked if police knew his name, he allegedly wrote: “[I]t might be time for me to … Be hard to locate.”A bail hearing was scheduled for Monday.The Washington Post, meanwhile, reported that the FBI and Department of Justice were considering not charging some of the hundreds of people arrested over the riot.It was “a politically loaded proposition”, the paper said, “but one alert to the practical concern that hundreds of such cases could swamp the local courthouse”.Donald Trump was impeached for inciting the Capitol attack. He will face trial in the Senate. More