US Politics

Former attorney general Jeff Sessions and other senior justice department officials impeded an internal departmental investigation into their role in implementing the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policy that separated thousands of children from their parents on the border, according to interviews and government records.
Sessions declined to be interviewed by investigators for the department’s inspector general, who conducted an inquiry of the family separation policy, according to a report made public last Thursday by the IG detailing the findings of its inquiry.
As attorney general, Sessions was one of the Trump administration’s most senior officials who devised and implemented the family separation policy. The inspector general, Michael Horowitz, called Sessions and his top aides a “driving force” behind the policy.
A second senior justice department official, Edward C O’Callaghan, who served as the justice department’s principal associate deputy attorney general during the family separation policy, similarly refused to answer questions from investigators, according to the report.
Former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who now says he regrets his role in implementing the policy, was twice interviewed by investigators, but made misleading statements to them that understated and obscured his role.
As a result of the refusal by Sessions and O’Callaghan to speak to investigators, and Rosenstein having misled the IG, a full historical accounting may never take place into what is perceived as a dark chapter in the nation’s history when more than 3,000 children were separated from their parents. Many of its victims younger than the age of five, some even infants, were held alone at substandard facilities under inhumane conditions.
The Biden administration has promised to reunite families. On 8 January , Biden vowed “our justice department and our investigative arms will make judgements about who is responsible … and whether or not the conduct is criminal”. If such a criminal investigation was undertaken, investigators would have powerful tools available to compel testimony of recalcitrant witnesses. More

The Oval Office has long symbolised the power and grandeur of the US presidency, and incoming White House incumbents traditionally change the decor to reflect the tone of their administration.
Joe Biden has unveiled the new ceremonial backdrop to his administration, marking a number of significant changes from that of his predecessor.
Curtains
Biden kept the curtains that hung during Donald Trump’s administration and had previously been used during Bill Clinton’s presidency. The carpet, taken from storage, is a darker blue than the Trump model. More

Democratic control of the US Senate could create problems for Donald Trump in the weeks ahead when the former president likely faces his second impeachment trial – but not because Democrats by themselves would be able to convict Trump on the charge at hand: incitement of insurrection.A two-thirds majority of voting senators – 67 if all 100 members vote – is still required to convict the president, and the Democratic caucus will number only 50 senators. Thus they would need 17 Republicans to join them to convict Trump.If convicted, Trump could be banned from ever again holding public office. If not, Trump, who won the votes of 74 million Americans just two months ago, might simply run for president again in 2024.Late Thursday it emerged that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is proposing to push back the start of the Senate trial to give Trump time to prepare. He said he is suggesting the impeachment charge be presented to the Senate on 28 January and the trial to start two weeks after that.Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said he was negotiating on timing but added “make no mistake about it. There will be a trial, there will be a vote, up or down or whether to convict the president”.The judgment facing Republicans is more political than constitutional, said Frank O Bowman III, author of High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump and a professor at the University of Missouri school of law.“If Republicans decide, as most of them will, maybe nearly all, to vote against this, it’s going to have nothing to do with their opinion about the behavior of Donald Trump,” he said.“It will have everything to do with their narrow political calculation about balancing whatever allegiance they may feel to the constitution with concerns about being attacked from the Trumpist right, to, on the other side, a sense that I suspect many of them have that if they could rid themselves of this turbulent priest, and not have to suffer any major electoral consequences, they’d do it in a minute.”On its face, 17 Republicans voting to convict Trump currently seems like an extremely tall order despite the widespread outrage at the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob that he had seemed to goad into action. Last time Trump faced an impeachment trial, in February 2020, only one Republican senator, Mitt Romney of Utah, cast a vote to convict him.But the political landscape has changed dramatically meanwhile. Disgust at the fatal sacking of the Capitol has only grown since 6 January, creating pressure on Republicans to condemn Trump, who appeared in person to speak to the mob before the attack and encouraged them to march on the building.Some Republicans might be eager to condemn Trump for other reasons, blaming him for their loss of the Senate majority, which happened because Republican candidates lost two runoff elections in Georgia in January, in a huge double upset.The most important Republican senator of all, minority leader McConnell – who would still be majority leader, if Republicans had won just one of those Georgia contests – has indicated that he might vote to convict Trump, whom he blasted on the floor of the Senate a day before Trump left office.“The mob was fed lies,” McConnell said. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people. And they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like. But we pressed on.”McConnell’s break with Trump is breathtaking for many political observers. The last time Trump faced an impeachment trial, McConnell promised “total coordination with the White House” on Trump’s defense, said there was “no chance” Trump would be convicted, and told Fox News, “the case is so darn weak coming from the House”.This time, McConnell has announced: “I have not made a final decision on how I will vote, and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate.”As the Senate majority, Democrats will enjoy certain procedural perks during the impeachment trial. They will control scheduling, and be able to tailor the trial around the legislative priorities of president Joe Biden.Senate majority leader Schumer is coordinating with House speaker Nancy Pelosi about when the article of impeachment would be handed over, triggering the trial process. “It will be soon; it will not be long,” Pelosi said on Thursday.Unlike at Trump’s first impeachment trial, Republicans this time will have great difficulty blocking witnesses at the new trial, assuming all 50 Democratic senators stick together – although exactly how a tie would be broken on a procedural objection to the introduction of a certain witness is not yet clear, said Bowman.“I suspect this is the kind of thing that the Senate parliamentarian is hunkered down with somebody figuring out,” Bowman said.It is likewise unclear how many Republicans might follow McConnell if he indeed tips toward convicting Trump. Ten Republicans joined Democrats last week in the House to impeach Trump by a 232-197 vote – hardly a flood of defectors, and yet the most bipartisan impeachment vote in history.Up for election only once every six years versus every other year for House members, senators are more insulated from political tides. Anger at how Trump has divided their party could tempt some Republicans toward banishing him, as could fear of what Trump will do if he is permitted to run for office again.Other powerful currents of ambition and desire are at work. At least a half-dozen Republican senators hope to run for president themselves in 2024, potentially conferring a certain convenience on having Trump offstage.The narrow impeachment charge against Trump is strong on the merits, said Bowman, but the most powerful case against him would take in the entirety of his conduct after the election, when he attacked the democracy with wild false claims about voter fraud, pressured local elections officials directly to overturn state results and then summoned a mob to the Capitol to block the certification of the vote.“Donald Trump tried to overturn American democracy, there’s no way to get around that, that’s what he tried to do,” Bowman said. “And we came within a gnat’s whisker of having him succeed.“So, is that impeachable? Dammit yes, and it is plainly the most impeachable sequence of events that has ever come to our attention, because it is the biggest betrayal by an American president of American constitutionalism in the history of our country.“The sad fact is that despite the fact that that’s obviously true, to anybody who’s not a QAnon delusionist, he probably is going to skate anyway, because too many Republicans are more worried about their own electoral future than they are about preserving the constitutional order.” More

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, is proposing to push back the start of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial by a week or more to give the former president time to review the case.House Democrats who voted to impeach Trump last week for inciting the 6 January Capitol attack have signaled they want a quick trial as President Joe Biden begins his term, saying a full reckoning is necessary before the country – and the Congress – can move on.But McConnell told his fellow GOP senators on a call Thursday that a short delay would give Trump time to prepare and stand up his legal team, ensuring due process.The Indiana senator Mike Braun said after the call that the trial might not begin “until sometime mid-February”. He said that was “due to the fact that the process as it occurred in the House evolved so quickly, and that it is not in line with the time you need to prepare for a defense in a Senate trial”.The timing will be set by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, who can trigger the start of the trial when she sends the House charges for “incitement of insurrection” to the Senate, and also by McConnell and the new Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, who are in negotiations over how to set up a 50-50 partisan divide in the Senate and the short-term agenda.Schumer is in charge of the Senate, assuming the majority leader post after Democrats won two new Senate seats in Georgia and Vice-President Kamala Harris was sworn in on Wednesday. But with such a narrow divide, Republicans will have some say over the trial’s procedure.Democrats are hoping to conduct the proceedings while also passing legislation that is a priority for Biden, including coronavirus relief, but they would need some cooperation from Senate Republicans to do that, as well.Schumer told reporters on Thursday that he was still negotiating with McConnell on how to conduct the trial, “but make no mistake about it. There will be a trial, there will be a vote, up or down or whether to convict the president.”Pelosi could send the article to the Senate as soon as Friday. Democrats say the proceedings should move quickly because they were all witnesses to the siege, many of them fleeing for safety as the rioters descended on the Capitol.“It will be soon, I don’t think it will be long, but we must do it,” Pelosi said on Thursday. She said Trump did not deserve a “get out of jail card” for his historic second impeachment just because he has left office and Biden and others are calling for national unity.[embedded content]Without the White House counsel’s office to defend him – as it did in his first trial last year – Trump’s allies have been searching for lawyers to argue the former president’s case. Members of his past legal teams have indicated they do not plan to join the effort, but the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham told GOP colleagues on Thursday that Trump was hiring the South Carolina attorney Butch Bowers, according to a person familiar with the call who was granted anonymity to discuss it. Bowers did not immediately respond to a message Thursday.Prosecuting the House case will be Pelosi’s nine impeachment managers, who have been regularly meeting to discuss strategy. Pelosi said she would talk to them “in the next few days” about when the Senate might be ready for a trial, indicating the decision could stretch into next week.Trump told thousands of supporters to “fight like hell” against the election results that Congress was certifying on 6 January just before an angry mob invaded the Capitol and interrupted the count. Five people, including a Capitol police officer, died in the mayhem, and the House impeached the outgoing president a week later, with 10 Republicans joining all Democrats in support.Pelosi said it would be “harmful to unity” to forget that “people died here on January 6, the attempt to undermine our election, to undermine our democracy, to dishonor our Constitution”. Following his first impeachment, Trump was acquitted by the Senate in February after his White House legal team, aided by his personal lawyers, aggressively fought the House charges that he had encouraged the president of Ukraine to investigate Biden in exchange for military aid. This time around, Pelosi noted, the House was not seeking to convict the president over private conversations but for a very public insurrection that they experienced themselves and that played out on live television.“This year the whole world bore witness to the president’s incitement,” Pelosi said.Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No 2 Senate Democrat, said it was still too early to know how long a trial would take, or if Democrats would want to call witnesses. But he said: “You don’t need to tell us what was going on with the mob scene – we were rushing down the staircase to escape.”McConnell, who said this week that Trump had “provoked” his supporters before the riot, has not said how he will vote. He told his GOP colleagues that it would be a vote of conscience. More

Joe Biden began his first full day as president confronting a host of major crises facing his fledgling administration, starting with a flurry of actions to address his most pressing challenge: the raging Covid-19 pandemic.At a White House event on Thursday afternoon, Biden unveiled a new national strategy to combat the coronavirus, which has killed more than 404,000 Americans and infected more than 24 million since it first began spreading across the US one year ago, by far the highest totals in the world.“For the past year, we couldn’t rely on the federal government to act with the urgency and focus and coordination we needed,” Biden said, referring to the administration of Donald Trump, which ended at midday the day before.“And we have seen the tragic costs of that failure,” he said.Biden again braced the nation for continued hardship, saying “it’s going to get worse before it gets better” and predicting the death toll could rise to 500,000 by the end of next month.Outlining his approach, Biden told Americans: “Help is on the way.”The actions on Thursday included an order to require mask-wearing on federal property, in airports and on many flights, trains, ships and long-distance buses, and also a huge push to speed up vaccinations, which have fallen far behind the government’s own schedule.“Mask up,” he said, waving a face mask. “For the first 100 days.”Even as he charted an aggressive approach to gain control of the virus, he was met with more bad news about the economy as another 900,000 people filed for unemployment benefits last week and he inherited the worst jobs market of any modern-day president.Biden and Harris began their day joined by family at the White House, where they virtually attended an inaugural prayer service held by the Washington National Cathedral, a tradition that has been reshaped by the pandemic.The president, members of his family as well as his vice-president, Kamala Harris, and her husband sat physically distanced in the Blue Room of the White House to stream the interfaith service. Many of the speakers extended prayers and blessings to the new leaders.The Rev William Barber, a preacher from North Carolina and civil rights leader who leads an anti-poverty campaign, delivered the homily, calling on the new administration to address what he called the “five interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation/denial of healthcare, the war economy, and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism”.“No, America has never yet been all that she has hoped to be,” Barber said. “But right here, right now, a third reconstruction is possible if we choose.”And on Thursday morning John Kerry warned, in his first remarks as the US’s new climate envoy, that the world was lagging behind the required pace of change needed to avert catastrophic impacts from the climate crisis.Kerry, the former US secretary of state in the Obama-Biden administration, acknowledged that America had been absent from the international effort to contain dangerous global heating during Donald Trump’s presidency but added: “Today no country and no continent is getting the job done.”The FBI director, Christopher Wray, will remain in the role, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said on Thursday. During her first press briefing on Wednesday, Psaki raised speculation that his job was in jeopardy when she declined to publicly state whether Biden had confidence in him.“I caused an unintentional ripple yesterday, so wanted to state very clearly President Biden intends to keep FBI Director Wray on in his role and he has confidence in the job he is doing,” she said in a tweet on Thursday.Wray took the helm at the agency in 2017 after Trump fired his predecessor, James Comey, just four years into what is traditionally a 10-year term. Wray’s future had been in doubt for much of the past year, as Trump openly criticized the director and the agency.Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Biden’s nominee for transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, appeared at his Senate confirmation hearing while the House prepared to initiate Trump’s second impeachment trial.In an opening statement, Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who ran against Biden for the Democratic nomination, said there was a “bipartisan appetite for a generational opportunity to transform and improve America’s infrastructure”.The Senate, which officially switched to Democratic control on Wednesday after the swearing-in of three new senators, two from Georgia, has never held an impeachment trial for a former president.Some Republicans have argued that it is not constitutional to try an official who has left office, but many scholars disagree. Democrats say they are ready to move forward as negotiations continue between the chambers over the scope and timing of a trial.After impeaching Trump for an unprecedented second time last week, the House has yet to transmit to the Senate the article charging Trump with “incitement of insurrection” over his role in encouraging a crowd of loyalists that attacked the US Capitol on 6 January in an effort to stop the certification of his defeat.At a press conference on Thursday, Pelosi refused to say when the House would send the article beyond that it “won’t be long”. More

Amanda Gorman’s star continued its remarkable climb Thursday following the presidential laureate’s resounding delivery of her poem during the US presidential inauguration.
Within hours of Wednesday’s delivery, her soul-stirring reading of The Hill We Climb, at the swearing-in of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had landed the 22-year-old’s two upcoming books at the top of Amazon’s bestseller list.
“I am on the floor. My books are number 1 and number 2 on Amazon after day 1,” the Los Angeles native wrote on Twitter.
Gorman, who described herself as a book worm as a child, overcame a speech impediment in her youth to become the first US national youth poet laureate in 2017.
She has now joined the ranks of inaugural poets such as Robert Frost and Maya Angelou.
With the honor of being the youngest poet in US history to mark the transition of presidential power, Gorman’s collection debuted her collection, also titled The Hill We Climb, which won the Harvard University graduate the top spot in online retailer’s sale charts.

Barack Obama
(@BarackObama)
On a day for the history books, @TheAmandaGorman delivered a poem that more than met the moment. Young people like her are proof that “there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it; if only we’re brave enough to be it.” pic.twitter.com/mbywtvjtEH

January 20, 2021

Her upcoming project geared to youth titled Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem followed closely behind. Both books are both due out in September.
According to the New York Times, Gorman said she had been struggling to write the inaugural poem. But then came the 6 January assault on the US Capitol, compelling her to stay up all night to finish it, this time certain of what she wanted to say.
“Being American is more than a pride we inherit. It’s the past we step into and how we repair it,” Gorman read as her yellow coat beamed from the steps of the US Capitol, just two weeks after the attempted insurrection and following a year of global protests for racial justice.

The performance stirred instant acclaim, with praise from across the country and political spectrum including the Republican-backing Lincoln Project and the former president Barack Obama.
“Wasn’t [Gorman’s] poem just stunning? She’s promised to run for president in 2036 and I for one can’t wait,” tweeted the former US secretary of state and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

AprilDRyan
(@AprilDRyan)
I can’t help but think that Maya Angelou is looking down from Heaven proud at the #BlackGirlMagic that is Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman.Amanda’s #InaugurationDay poem “The Hill We Climb” was beautiful and wonderfully delivered.#AmandaGorman #Inauguration2021

January 20, 2021

The poet’s social media also boomed, surging from her initial tens of thousands to well over a million in new followers to her Twitter fanbase.
By Wednesday night, an audibly stunned Anderson Cooper echoed the public’s admiration on his show, revealing he was “transfixed” by the young poet’s words.
A humble Gorman took the praise in stride, however, thanking followers while sharing her mantra she said not only motivates her before performances, but also spoke to the significance of the historic inauguration .
“I’m the daughter of Black writers,” Gorman said. “We’re descended from freedom fighters who broke through chains and change the world.
They call me.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report. More

In British politics, everyone now loves President Joe Biden. That the UK opposition parties are foundation members of the Biden appreciation club is not surprising. Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens all identify most naturally with the Democrats and thus with the new administration in Washington. But the changing of the guard at the White House this week has won strikingly broad support across the entire political spectrum too.Many Conservatives now take an enthusiastic view of Mr Biden as well. In some cases this is hard to believe – or forgive. Not long ago, many of the same Tory politicians who now enthuse about Mr Biden tried to bet the house on Donald Trump. Theresa May rushed to Washington to court him. Michael Gove conducted a gushing interview. Boris Johnson said he should get the Nobel peace prize. A US trade deal was obsessively talked up. Today, these same politicians are all friends of Joe and behave as if they barely knew Mr Trump.Even so, the resetting of the dial with America is welcome. But if it is not to be merely opportunistic, it must be accompanied by more honesty, humility and clarity. Mr Trump was never the ally that the last two prime ministers imagined. He was never going to agree a good trade deal. He was always an embarrassment. And he was always a threat to the democratic and liberal values that Britain and the United States once stood for and which went absent without leave after 2016.Over decades, British leaders have often tended to exaggerate Britain’s importance to the US. Mr Johnson, an inveterate truth stretcher, is the same. The necessary modesty about what is realistically possible in the post-Trump era will not come naturally to him. The security relationship undoubtedly remains strong and important. But the new starting point should be the recognition that, in different ways, Britain and America are emerging from unprecedentedly difficult eras internally and in their international relations, for which they themselves bear responsibility.In any event, there can and should be no instant return to some of the US-UK relationships of the recent past. The two countries are not cold war allies, because there is no cold war. They are not military interventionist allies either, because there is no appetite in either country for such projects after Afghanistan and Iraq. Neither Mr Biden nor Mr Johnson is proposing some new grand strategic project.This ought to be a phase of rebuilding in US-UK relations. After the past four years, neither country is in a position to preach to others about democratic institutions and values. The US has just survived a potential coup, supported by a significant proportion of its citizens, to overthrow an election result. Britain has just backed down from a threat to get its way in relations with Europe by breaking international law. It has needlessly damaged relations with Ireland, our nearest neighbour, from which Mr Biden proudly traces his origins. It has now started a petulant row over the EU’s diplomatic status.This is not the way to win friends and influence people. Britain needs allies in the wake of Brexit and amid the rise of Asia and the waning of American global hegemony. Values and interests such as democracy and the rule of law matter in those alliances. To that end, Britain must make more and better use of soft power assets like the BBC, its universities and the aid budget. Mr Biden’s arrival in office opens up new international possibilities on issues like Covid, climate and internet freedom. But we need to be realistic. Britain must treat partnership seriously, not pick fights we do not deserve to win or make claims we can never hope to fulfil without allies. More

In years to come, we may recall Wednesday’s inauguration ceremony by reading again Amanda Gorman’s words, delivered to a spellbound inauguration assembly (Biden offers a message of resilience in America’s ‘winter of peril’, 20 January). The authority of her poem comes from the clarity of its imagery and the uncompromising challenge of its rhetoric.
What it says ensures that, to relief at the end of America’s political nightmare and goodwill towards the two principals in the drama that unfolded, must now be added the assertion that we can “raise this wounded world into a wondrous one”.Frank PaiceNorwich
• Amid the analysis of Joe Biden’s inauguration speech, it is worth noting that he referred to the evil of racism twice, specifically mentioning “systemic racism”. At a time when the UK’s Conservative government is determined to pretend systemic racism doesn’t exist, this is refreshing.
But is any Labour politician willing to show a similar awareness of how racism operates in Great Britain? Will Keir Starmer step up to the mark and challenge the government’s denial and strongly condemn the systemic racism that blights the lives of too many people in this country? I worry that the Labour leadership’s fear of a “culture wars” backlash has already induced a reluctance to speak out for these fundamental values.Geoff SkinnerKensal Green, London
• Perhaps Donald Trump could take solace in the fact that the crowd at his inauguration was definitely bigger than that at President Biden’s. Size matters to him after all.Joan FurtadoWhitworth, Lancashire More