US Politics

Donald Trump, the first US president to have been impeached twice, refuses to attend president-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration this Wednesday.
He is one of seven US presidents ever to have done so, joining the company of John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, and most recently, Richard Nixon. Wilson had had a stroke and Nixon had resigned. Presidents have seldom rejected this norm of attendance, usually seen as an important symbol of the peaceful transition of power.
Graphic of US presidents showing who did not attend their successors’ inaugurations.
In place of his attendance at the US Capitol, Trump plans to host an event of his own at Joint Base Andrews, featuring a military band and a 21-gun salute.
On Twitter, the presidential historian Michael Beschloss likened Trump’s behavior to “a three-year-old staging a tantrum”.

Michael Beschloss
(@BeschlossDC)
Like a three-year-old staging a tantrum because it’s not his birthday.”Trump has asked for a major send-off on Inauguration Day next week,” reports CNN.

January 15, 2021

Trump’s refusal to attend and his insistence on an alternative ceremony come amid a presidential transition that has already been marked by irregularities. Most transitions begin shortly after the losing candidate quickly concedes an election; Trump waited to do so until after he had incited violence at the US Capitol based on false claims of election fraud.
Though Biden won a clear margin of victory in the popular and electoral votes, he and his team were not given timely access to key briefings, including details about national security and the Covid-19 vaccination rollout.
Given these larger omissions, it is perhaps not surprising that the smaller traditional gestures of welcome, usually extended by the departing presidential family, have also been absent. While sitting presidents have often invited their successors and their families to the White House in the days before inauguration, this too was omitted this year.
It is an indecorous end to an indecorous presidency. More

In early 2003, as government buildings across Iraq were being looted, Donald Rumsfeld told reporters, “Freedom’s untidy.” Iraq was “being liberated”, he said. “Free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things.”Iraqi journalist Ali Adeeb Alnaemi was in Baghdad at the time. “I was driving around and seeing looting and burning while American soldiers were standing there, and they would say to me, ‘We have no orders to interfere,’” he said.He knew what he was seeing: “This is not freedom.”Almost two decades later, supporters of a different Republican president invaded and looted the US Capitol and left five people dead. Amid a huge security crackdown in the aftermath, a secure “Green Zone” has even been created in the heart of Washington DC – just as the US military did in Baghdad.Alnaemi watched the news coverage in shock. It was like “living a nightmare again”, he said.Also as in 2003, the chaos and violence he was witnessing had originated from lies spread by the US president and his administration. The invasion of Iraq had been justified by false claims about weapons of mass destruction. “Now it’s, ‘take back your country’, ‘Stop the steal’,” Alnaemi said. “Different lies, but they have similar effects.”In the past week, tens of thousands of National Guard troops have filled Washington DC. There are checkpoints to get into government buildings, fortified by fences and concrete barricades, and troops with rifles patrolling street corners downtown. The images of a heavily militarized Washington have left local residents disoriented, and prompted condemnation from military veterans in Congress“I expected this in Baghdad. I never imagined this in Washington,” said Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts congressman who fought in Iraq, to the Guardian.“It’s hard to see the pantheon of our democracy fortified like the war zones I used to know,” tweeted Jason Crow, a Colorado congressman, saying that he had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan “so we could enjoy peace at home”.Other American veterans said the images from Washington were surreal, but not exactly surprising. Matt Gallagher, a writer and Army veteran who served in Iraq, described “this strange sense of inevitability”, as he looked at the photographs of concertina wire and traffic control points and “young national guardsmen, many of whom were probably born around 9/11”.“Their America has always done this elsewhere,” he said. “Now it’s happening here.”Captioning a photograph of troops on Capitol Hill, he wrote, “We’ve done forever-warred ourselves.”There’s been plenty of pushback to attempts to compare the current state of Washington DC to a war zone.“The troops are not speaking a foreign language, manning checkpoints, traveling in convoys so secure that they would be authorized to shoot cars that drive in between them. They’re not raiding homes. Let’s not trivialize military occupation,” Laila Al-Arian, an American journalist, wrote last week.Tom Porter, a policy spokesman for the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, told the Guardian that veterans had been making plenty of dark jokes about Washington’s Green Zone, asking whether the city was now disposing of trash and human waste by setting it on fire with jet fuel in giant “burn pits”, as the military has done in the Middle East.“Those that have actually been to a war zone know that our city and Capitol does not actually resemble a war zone,” he said, adding that he thought officials should have chosen a different name for the secure area of Washington during inauguration.“When we established the Green Zone there were for years questions about the amount of money we were spending fortifying the central part of the city,” Porter said. “There were questions about, ‘How long are you staying?’ ‘Is this an invasion?’ ‘Are you going to be here forever?’ I don’t think that’s what our security personnel and the secret service and the federal government want Americans thinking about.”Gallagher said veterans had reacted with “great amusement” to the concern Americans had expressed at seeing members of the National Guard sleeping on the floor of the Capitol building.“I mean, they’re indoors, they’re fine,” he said. “You know, if you’re worried about them, think about the ones in Afghanistan still getting shot at.”For some Iraqis, the impulse to compare Washington to occupied Baghdad was infuriating, and all too familiar.“There are many people who will always associate Baghdad or Iraq with violence and instability,” Hamzeh Hadad, an Iraqi political analyst, said. “When something politically inevitable but shocking happens in the US, the first thought is to compare it to the place that they think is exceptionally bad.”But the experience of dictatorship, invasion, and stark internal division is not “exclusively Iraqi”, Hadad said. “Democracy is fragile everywhere and needs to be maintained. The fact that they don’t realize this, means that they misunderstand both Iraq and the United States.”The US government response to Trump supporters storming the Capitol is already beginning to mirror the tactics of America’s global war on terror, with discussions of placing the invaders on “no fly” lists, and a former intelligence official suggesting that the lessons learned fighting al-Qaida could now be used against domestic terrorists.For some Americans, including the Muslim and Arab Americans who have faced decades of government surveillance and suspicion, the war on terror has always been operating at home. But the reaction to the 6 January attack may represent a new stage of the “imperial boomerang”, in which tactics developed by empires to maintain control abroad end up being used against the residents of the homeland.It’s not simply that the wars gave “training and operational experience to insurrectionists like the Navy SEAL and Iraq/Afghanistan veteran who posted to the internet that he breached the Capitol”, Spencer Ackerman, a former Guardian national security reporter and author of the forthcoming Reign of Terror: How The 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump, said.The War on Terror also created “a paranoid, racist and militarized atmosphere of permanent emergency”, he added. And because the war on terror has never ended, it creates a “volatile atmosphere” for people obsessed with American invincibility, fueling frustration that “the war’s failure is due to internal subversion”.“When you tell people for an entire generation that their enemies are among them, some of them are going to act accordingly,” Ackerman said.America’s foreign wars have fueled waves of racist extremism at home for at least a century, including a huge resurgence of Ku Klux Klan membership in the wake of the first world war.Historian Kathleen Belew has also documented how white veterans of the Vietnam war, and non-veterans obsessed with the war’s failure, played a crucial role in violent white power movements in the 1970s through the 1990s. The deadliest domestic terror attack in recent decades, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was carried out by Gulf war veteran Timothy McVeigh.Some American veterans pushed back on the idea that the presence of veterans among the Capitol invaders was particularly significant.Porter, of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said that veterans were “upset” and “angry” about the alleged presence of military veterans among the attackers, and felt it did not reflect their values.He also said that it was not “an accurate description of what is actually going on in the United States”, to say that America’s forever wars had now come home, and that the Capitol attack, which the veterans group had condemned strongly, was very different from the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.“It’s disgusting to me that any veteran would be among the rioters, but it’s still a strikingly small percentage,” said Moulton, the Massachusetts congressman and Marine Corps veteran. “Just keep in perspective: there are probably 2,000 times as many troops defending the Capitol as there were veterans assaulting it.”“Most veterans know what it means to protect and defend the constitution. They’re patriots and law abiding citizens.”Moulton said he did not see much connection between the current moment and the experience of America’s recent wars.“The division in American politics today is due more to Donald Trump, not the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said. The crisis in the United States had “deep roots in racism, income inequality, educational disparities and other things”, he said. The aftermath of America’s long wars “might be a small part of it, but I don’t think it’s the core cause here”.But Alnaemi, the Iraqi American journalist, said he saw fundamental connections between the current moment and how America had fought its wars. The same political approach was evident in both, he said: ignorance, arrogance, the desire for control, the “refusal to see the facts as they are”.“It’s not Trump v Bush or Rumsfeld or Cheney, it’s a way of thinking, an attitude, that causes this failure,” he said.Alnaemi, who became a US citizen three years ago and now teaches at New York University, said he was hopeful his fellow citizens would take the attack seriously, demand accountability for those who participated, and find a way to safeguard their democracy.But he said he found it “mind-boggling” when he saw a poll that only 56% of Americans supported impeaching Trump after the Capitol invasion. That meant “43% of the people who were asked are still thinking that, well, you know, maybe this is not a big deal”, he said.“The things that you are proud of have been attacked, have been insulted, in front of the whole world,” he said. “Is there anything else that you need to stand up and defend your country? What does the flag stand for if it does not stand for this?”News reported about authorities monitoring for improvised explosive devices in Washington had left him shaken, remembering what it was like living in Baghdad, where news about IED attacks, with “two people wounded, or three or five, was a daily item in our news”.“This is my home now,” he said. “Life is not enough for you to keep pursuing another home, all of your life. Once is enough.”Gallagher, the army veteran, said that one of the deepest similarities between the aftermath of the Capitol attack and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was that there was no clear end in sight, that the conflict was “open ended”.“Everybody knows this is the beginning of something,” Gallagher said. “Getting through the inauguration may be the short term goal, but it is hardly the end of whatever this is going to be.” More

The last time a Democratic president took control of the White House, the wreckage he inherited was so great, there was little else his incoming team could prioritize.Twelve years ago, Barack Obama’s blunt-spoken chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, liked to describe the Republican legacy – a financial crisis, deep recession and two wars – as a giant shit sandwich wrapped in a red ribbon.Recovering from the economic crisis of George W Bush’s final year would require most of the Obama team’s focus in their first two years, when they controlled both sides of Congress with large majorities. Obama handed over his signature campaign issue – winding down the war in Iraq – to his vice-president to manage.Now that former vice-president takes over the presidency with even more wreckage to sift through.Joe Biden must overcome a pandemic, rebuild an economy, tackle racist insurrectionists and the ex-president who incited them, and reassert American leadership across a distrustful world. Somehow he must do all that while also confirming his senior officials in a Senate with no working majority.So far the Biden team shows no sign of limiting its ambition in terms of what it hopes Congress will take up – and what it will push through executive action – in its first days and weeks in power. In addition to signing a flurry of executive orders, rejoining the Paris climate accords and restarting the Iran nuclear deal, Biden will also propose sweeping immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for the undocumented.Comprehensive reform of the nation’s broken immigration system proved beyond the capabilities of both Bush and Obama. It was Bush’s failure to enact immigration reform in 2007 that effectively marked the end of his second-term agenda, as Republicans turned towards a nativist agenda that Donald Trump placed at the heart of his campaign and presidency.The Biden team may be marking a sharp break with the Trump years in prioritizing immigration reform. But what are their realistic prospects for legislative progress in the first year of the Biden presidency?Obama veterans think there may be one good reason why Biden can feel more optimistic about political progress than their own experience in 2009, when Republicans obstructed their action from the outset, would dictate. That reason is the legacy of one Donald Trump.“I think the difference between this and 2009 is that I believe there’s going to be a significant number of Republicans in Congress who think that their party needs a course correction here,” said Joel Benenson, who served as strategist and pollster to both Obama and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns. “It doesn’t mean they are suddenly going to be liberal Rockefeller Republicans, but the damage that Trump has done to the party and its image – and it has exacerbated through the events of the last two weeks – is giving them pause.“I don’t think it’s a major shift ideologically, but they have to recognize they are losing large and important sections of the electorate, and that’s going to be problematic for them. They know for their long-term prospects they can’t just be a base party. The biggest political failure of Donald Trump is that he didn’t fundamentally understand that to win the presidency, you have to win the center.”At the heart of that calculation is the singular figure of Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, who now finds himself in the minority after six years of control. McConnell was effective as an obstructionist force through the end of the Obama presidency, but he also can be a pragmatic figure when it comes to gaining and holding power.Recent polling underscores McConnell’s challenge: the majority of Republicans are fundamentally misaligned with the majority of the country. Almost two-thirds of the party falsely believes that Donald Trump won last year’s election, according to polling by the Pew Research Center. The same polling showed that more than two-thirds of Americans do not want Trump to play a major political role moving forward, giving him the lowest approval rating of his presidency at just 29%.Congressional Democrats aim to test McConnell’s approach – and his main lever of power, the filibuster – with their first legislation, which would expand voting rights and reform campaign finance.The so-called For The People Act, which passed the house in 2019, aims to tackle gerrymandering, “dark money” donations, and expand voting rights through initiatives such as a national voter registration system. If McConnell filibusters the bill, there will be immediate pressure for Democrats to abolish the filibuster through a change in the Senate rules requiring 51 votes.Senator Jeff Merkley, the Oregon Democrat who has introduced the new bill, said: “Each and every one of us takes an oath to protect and defend the constitution. There’s nothing more fundamental than the ability to vote. That should not be subject to a veto by McConnell. If he exercises a veto, it will cause everyone to figure out how to honor their oath to the constitution that requires us to pass this legislation.”Merkley believes that Democrats can achieve a lot in Congress by using budget reconciliation rules that allow taxing and spending legislation – including climate-related policies – by simple majority votes. But policy changes such as immigration reform will need 60 votes to overcome a likely Republican filibuster, and Merkley expects McConnell to continue with his approach from the Obama years.“I think McConnell is deeply wedded to the strategy of delay and obstruction,” he said. “It has been his fundamental theory of power that if you show the majority in place isn’t getting the job done, it strengthens your case to replace them.”In two years, one-third of the Senate will be up for re-election, representing the class of 2016, when Trump won the presidency, and the senators at risk are overwhelmingly Republican – including Republicans from Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where Biden won last year.The historical trend is clear: the president’s party tends to lose seats in the first mid-term congressional elections. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald Trump all lost control of the House in their first mid-terms. The one president who bucked the trend was George W Bush, in the first elections after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.It’s unclear how the domestic terrorism threat of white supremacist groups – and this month’s insurrection at Capitol Hill – will play out in the next several months, as Trump’s second impeachment trial begins and federal investigations continue to unfold with criminal prosecutions across the country.“The congressional Republican party in the House and the Senate are going to have to be very careful about how they choose to obstruct and govern in the aftermath of the insurrection at the hands of the president they refused to stand up to,” said Benenson. “They could get labeled as complicit with the leaders of the worse episode we have seen since the civil war. They have to be mindful of that.” More

Donald Trump’s final day in office has sparked fresh political debate in Australia about whether Scott Morrison allowed himself to get too close to the outgoing US president. But the focus will soon shift to building bridges with the incoming Joe Biden administration.What will the new administration mean for Australia when it comes to renewing the alliance, navigating tensions with a rising China, dealing with a newly ambitious US approach to climate policy, working together on global trade rules and reforming global bodies?Renewing the allianceBiden and his top advisers have made clear he will restore a more conventional relationship with allies such as Australia – turning the page on Trump’s “America First” approach that was often seen as prioritising the outgoing president’s own instincts and preferences over coordination with partners.Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has made positive noises about working with the Australian government. He has said Biden would be “eager to develop a really strong relationship” with Morrison. Regardless of any political or policy differences, Sullivan predicts Biden and Morrison will “get off to a strong start” because the former vice-president sees Australia as the kind of partner central to finding successful strategies on a wide range of global issues.That coordination will be helped by the fact that a number of Biden’s senior cabinet appointees and other nominees to key positions are well known to the Australian government. For example, Australia’s foreign minister, Marise Payne, has met and worked with Biden’s secretary of state nominee, Antony Blinken, in the past.But the opposition Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, has chided Morrison for not meeting any senior Democrats when he visited the US in 2019 and has argued the incoming administration will have noticed the prime minister’s failure to forcefully condemn Trump for his role in inciting the deadly riots at the US Capitol.Morrison hit back on Wednesday, telling 2GB radio: “If people want to have a crack at me because I worked with the president of the United States, well I think that reflects more on them than me.” He said the alliance was bigger than personalities and would endure: “Whoever the prime minister is and whoever the president is, it’s important that … both of us steward that relationship for the benefit of both of our countries.”Navigating tensions with a more powerful ChinaMorrison has predicted the arrival of the Biden administration could change some of the “atmospherics” in the tense relationship between the US and China. The US-China relationship is seen in Canberra as one of the biggest drivers of the dynamics in our region, so the government will be watching closely. That comes as the Australian government seeks to navigate its own rocky ties with China.Australian officials are pleased with the incoming Biden administration’s signals about greater coordination with allies on issues such as China. While Australian government insiders cite elements of coordination during the Trump administration – and the revitalisation of the Quad that also includes Japan and India – Australia would welcome the prospect of constructive talks on strategy.Still, there is not likely to be any major change in America’s posture of competition with China, given the new bipartisan consensus in Washington for a hard line on Beijing. Blinken may seek to carve out areas of cooperation: he has foreshadowed trying to work with China on issues such as climate change, dealing with health emergencies and preventing the spread of dangerous weapons. But he has also said the US needs to take steps to “deter aggression if China pursues it” and that “we are in a competition with China”. In a Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Blinken backed outgoing secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s declaration that China has committed genocide against Uighurs in the Xinjiang region.The Australian government is pleased with some of the key picks who will be influential in shaping China policy, including Kurt Campbell, who served as Barack Obama’s assistant secretary of state for east Asian and Pacific affairs and was responsible for the US pivot to Asia. Campbell will serve on Biden’s national security council (NSC) as coordinator for the Indo-Pacific.In an article he co-wrote for Foreign Affairs earlier this month, Campbell called for an Indo-Pacific strategy that incorporated “the need for a balance of power; the need for an order that the region’s states recognise as legitimate; and the need for an allied and partner coalition to address China’s challenge to both”.Campbell criticised China over “South China Sea island building, East China Sea incursions, conflict with India, threats to invade Taiwan, and internal repression in Hong Kong and Xinjiang” and said: “This behaviour, combined with China’s preference for economic coercion, most recently directed against Australia, means that many of the order’s organising principles are at risk.”Jake Sullivan, the incoming national security adviser, has reached out to Australia by sending a signal of support in December amid the storm over a Chinese official’s tweet about Australia and a series of trade actions against Australian export sectors.The Australian people have made great sacrifices to protect freedom and democracy around the world. As we have for a century, America will stand shoulder to shoulder with our ally Australia and rally fellow democracies to advance our shared security, prosperity, and values.— Jake Sullivan (@jakejsullivan) December 2, 2020
Dealing with US pivot on climate actionClimate will be an area that will be tricky for the Australian government to navigate, given it has so far resisted calls to formally commit to net zero emissions by 2050.Former US secretary of state John Kerry will be at the centre of efforts to push countries to lift their level of ambition, having been named as Biden’s special presidential envoy for climate. Biden will act quickly to reverse Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement and has vowed to put the US on an irreversible course to net zero emissions by 2050.Sullivan has foreshadowed some difficult conversations with allies regarding climate action – reflecting the importance Biden has placed on helping to spur more ambitious global action. Sullivan has said while Biden would hold heavy emitters such as China accountable for doing more “he’s also going to push our friends to do more as well” because everyone needs to “up their game”. Biden would be respectful with allies, Sullivan said, “but he’s not going to pull any punches on it”.To date, Morrison has played down the appearance of a split on climate policy. Speaking to reports about the initial post-election congratulatory call he had with Biden in November, Morrison said the “specific matter” of a target of net zero emissions by 2050 was not discussed, but he had raised the similarity of their policies on emissions reduction technology.But in remarks since the US election, and after a growing number of Australia’s trading partners committed to the 2050 goal, Morrison has sounded more positive about net zero, arguing Australia aspired to get there “as quickly as possible”. He has also pivoted on Kyoto carryover credits.Trade and economic issuesAustralia will be hoping for a return to predictability on trade and economic issues. Trump caused consternation with allies such as Australia by inking a “phase 1” trade deal with Xi Jinping in early 2020 that committed China to buy vast quantities of goods from the US. That has been likened to a purchasing agreement rather than something consistent with global trading rules. Trump also forced allies to negotiate exemptions on tariffs on steel and aluminium.The Biden team is likely to work with Australia and other countries on seeking reform of the World Trade Organization. Campbell’s Foreign Policy piece said the Biden administration “should pursue bespoke or ad hoc bodies focused on individual problems, such as the D-10 proposed by the United Kingdom (the G-7 democracies plus Australia, India, and South Korea).” Such coalitions, Campbell said, would be “most urgent for questions of trade, technology, supply chains, and standards”.But there is unlikely to be any swift return of the US to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Pacific rim trade pact that Australia and Japan helped rescue after Trump pulled out.MultilateralismAustralian officials are also looking forward to working with the US in multilateral forums. Trump’s instinct was to retreat from such bodies – and Morrison has previously given a nod to such views with his previous speech on “negative globalism”. But the government made clear, after an audit last year, that it would step up its level of engagement in global bodies while seeking reform to ensure they are as effective as possible. Australian officials welcome the understanding from the Biden team that multilateral and big organisations can bring frustrations and take time, but walking away from the space is not the answer. More

Donald Trump has pardoned former senior adviser Steve Bannon, among scores of others including rappers, financiers and former members of Congress in the final hours of his presidency.Among the 73 people pardoned was Elliott Broidy, a leading former fundraiser for Trump who has admitted illegally lobbying the US government to drop its inquiry into the Malaysia 1MDB corruption scandal and to deport an exiled Chinese billionaire. Also on the list was Ken Kurson, a friend of Jared Kushner who was charged in October last year with cyberstalking during a heated divorce.Rappers Lil Wayne and Kodak Black – who were prosecuted on federal weapons offences – and former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who is serving a 28-year prison term on corruption charges, were also pardoned. A further 70 people had their sentences commuted.Trump did not attempt to give himself a pre-emptive pardon, and has not pardoned members of his family or Rudy Giuliani, his former personal lawyer with whom he has fallen out. Julian Assange was another figure subject to speculation who was not on the list. Prosecutors and scholars have, however, said a grey area in the constitution means a president may be able to issue “secret” pardons, without notifying Congress or the public.The New York Times and CNN described the pardoning of Bannon, a former editor of Breitbart as a last-minute pre-emptive move to protect Bannon from his upcoming fraud trial. Bannon faces trial in May following his arrest in August last year on a luxury yacht off the Connecticut coast, accused of siphoning money from We Build the Wall, an online fundraiser for Trump’s contentious border wall with Mexico.Federal prosecutors allege Bannon used a non-profit he controlled to divert “over $1m from the … online campaign, at least some of which he used to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal expenses”.Officials said We Build The Wall raised more than $25m. Bannon has denied one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and another of conspiracy to commit money laundering.The news on Bannon and Broidy brought swift outcry. Noah Bookbinder at legal watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said: “Even Nixon didn’t pardon his cronies on the way out. Amazingly, in his final 24 hours in office, Donald Trump found one more way to fail to live up to the ethical standard of Richard Nixon.”Democrat Adam Schiff tweeted: “Steve Bannon is getting a pardon from Trump after defrauding Trump’s own supporters into paying for a wall that Trump promised Mexico would pay for. And if that all sounds crazy, that’s because it is. Thank God we have only 12 more hours of this den of thieves.”Bannon was recently banned from Twitter for calling for the beheading of Dr Anthony Fauci and the FBI director, Christopher Wray.He and Trump have been estranged since the former adviser left the White House and made critical remarks about the president in a tell-all book about the president called Fire and Fury by journalist Michael Wolff. Trump said his former consigliere had “lost his mind”.Despite Trump’s last-minute move on Bannon, reportedly delayed because the president was so torn on the issue, it would not protect his former adviser from charges brought by state courts.Trump has also been mulling future political ambitions, according to the Wall Street Journal, reportedly speaking to aides about the possibility of forming a new political party. The president favoured the name Patriot Party, it reported.Multiple Republican party figures defending Trump in his second impeachment, for inciting the Capitol attack on 6 January, counseled him not to offer pardons to any of the more than 100 people arrested as a result.Presidential pardons and acts of clemency do not imply innocence. Presidents often bestow them on allies and donors but Trump has taken the practice to extremes.Previous recipients include aides and allies Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, George Papadopoulos and Paul Manafort, all convicted in the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow, and Charles Kushner, the father of Trump’s son-in-law and chief adviser, Jared Kushner.Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were reportedly closely involved in the process deciding Trump’s final pardons.Trump is due to leave Washington on Wednesday morning, ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration as the 46th president. He will fly to Florida, stripped of the legal protection of office.Trump faces state investigations of his business affairs and could face legal jeopardy over acts in office including his attempts to overturn election defeat and his incitement of the Capitol riot on 6 January, over which he was impeached a second time.If Trump is convicted in his second Senate trial, he could be barred from running for office again. More

The people US president Donald Trump has granted clemency to range from rappers to financiers and lobbyists. Notable names on the list include:Steve BannonBannon, 67, was a key adviser in Trump’s 2016 presidential run. He was charged last year with swindling Trump supporters over an effort to raise private funds to build the president’s wall on the US-Mexico border. He has pleaded not guilty.White House officials had advised Trump against pardoning Bannon, who left the Trump administration in late 2017. The two men have lately rekindled their relationship as Trump sought support for his unproven claims of voter fraud, an official familiar with the situation said.Elliott BroidyBroidy, a major Republican party fundraiser, pleaded guilty in October to acting as an unregistered foreign agent, admitting to accepting money to secretly lobby the Trump administration for Chinese and Malaysian interests. He has been pardoned. Broidy held finance posts in Trump’s 2016 campaign and on his inaugural committee.Prosecutors alleged Broidy received millions of dollars in payments from an unnamed foreign national to try to arrange the end of a U.S. investigation into billions of dollars embezzled from 1MDB, a Malaysian government investment fund.Kwame KilpatrickThe former Detroit mayor was sentenced in 2013 to 28 years in prison following his conviction on two dozen charges including racketeering, bribery and extortion from a conspiracy, which prosecutors said had worsened the city’s financial crisis. Kilpatrick, 50, once seen as a rising star in the Democratic party, received one of the longest corruption sentences ever handed to a major US politician. Kilpatrick, who was mayor from 2002 to 2008, extorted bribes from contractors who wanted to get or keep Detroit city contracts, prosecutors said. His sentence has been commuted.Lil WayneLil Wayne, 38, whose real name is Dwayne Michael Carter, pleaded guilty in federal court in December to illegally possessing a firearm and faced up to 10 years in prison. He was scheduled to be sentenced in March in Florida. A year earlier, the Grammy winner was found with a loaded, gold-plated .45-caliber handgun in his baggage aboard a private plane that had landed at an executive airport near Miami. A previous felony conviction made it illegal for the rapper to have the weapon or ammunition. In October, Wayne tweeted a picture of himself with Trump following what he called a “great meeting” with the president. He has been pardoned.Rapper Kodak BlackBlack, 23, who was born Bill Kahan Kapri, is in federal prison for making a false statement to buy a firearm, and released the album called Bill Israel from behind bars.Black pleaded guilty in August 2019, and three months later was sentenced to three years and 10 months in prison. He is seeking compassionate release. In a since-deleted tweet in November, Black promised to spend $1m on charity if the president released him, the hip-hop magazine XXL reported. His sentence has been commuted.Sholam WeissWeiss was convicted of bilking $125m from National Heritage Life Insurance and its elderly policyholders. He fled the United States and was sentenced in absentia in 2000 to 845 years in prison, but he was eventually extradited from Austria. Weiss, 66, is at a US penitentiary in Pennsylvania, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.Trump lawyers from his first impeachment, Alan Dershowitz and Jay Sekulow, sent letters to the White House in support of Weiss. His sentence has been commuted.Anthony LevandowskiLevandowski, a former Google engineer, pleaded guilty to stealing secret technology related to self-driving cars from the company before becoming the head of Uber’s rival unit. In August, a judge in San Francisco sentenced Levandowski to 18 months in prison but said he could enter custody once the Covid-19 pandemic has subsided.The judge, William Alsup, who has been involved in Silicon Valley litigation for nearly five decades, described Levandowski’s conviction as the “biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen”. He has been pardoned.Other pardons and commutationsTodd BoulangerAbel HoltzRick RenziKenneth KursonCasey UrlacherCarl Andrews BoggsDr. Scott HarkonenJohnny D. Phillips, JrDr. Mahmoud Reza BankiJames E. Johnson, JrTommaso ButiGlen MossAviem SellaJohn NystromScott Conor CrosbyLynn BarneyJoshua J. SmithAmy PovahDr. Frederick NahasDavid TammanDr. Faustino BernadettPaul EricksonGregory Jorgensen, Deborah Jorgensen, Martin Jorgensen (posthumous)Todd Farha, Thaddeus Bereday, William Kale, Paul Behrens, Peter ClayPatrick Lee SwisherRobert SherrillDr. Robert S. CorkernDavid Lamar ClantonGeorge GilmoreDesiree PerezRobert “Bob” ZangrilloHillel NahmadBrian McSwainJohn Duncan FordhamWilliam “Ed” HenryRandall “Duke” Cunningham – conditional pardonStephen OdzerSteven Benjamin FloydJoey HancockDavid E. MillerJames Austin HayesDrew BrownsteinRobert BowkerAmir KhanDavid RowlandJessica FreaseRobert Cannon “Robin” HayesThomas Kenton “Ken” FordMichael LibertyGreg ReyesFerrell Damon ScottJerry Donnell WaldenJeffrey Alan ConwayBenedict OlberdingSyrita Steib-MartinMichael AshleyLou HobbsMatthew Antoine CanadyMario ClaiborneRodney Nakia GibsonTom Leroy WhitehurstMonstsho Eugene VernonLuis Fernando SicardDeWayne PhelpsIsaac NelsonTraie Tavares KellyJavier GonzalesDouglas JemalEric Wesley PattonRobert William CawthonHal Knudson MerglerGary Evan HendlerJohn Harold WallSteven Samuel GranthamClarence Olin FreemanFred Keith AlfordJohn KnockKenneth Charles FragosoLuis GonzalezAnthony DeJohnCorvain CooperWay Quoe LongMichael PelletierCraig CesalDarrell FrazierLavonne RoachBlanca Virgen –Robert FrancisBrian SimmonsDerrick SmithJaime A. DavidsonRaymond HersmanDavid BarrenJames RomansJonathon BraunMichael HarrisKyle KimotoChalana McFarlandEliyahu WeinsteinJohn Estin DavisAlex AdjmiNoah KleinmanTena LoganMaryAnne LockeJawad A. MusaAdriana ShayotaApril CootsCaroline YeatsJodi Lynn RichterKristina BohnenkampMary RobertsCassandra Ann KasowskiLerna Lea PaulsonAnn ButlerSydney NavarroTara PerryJon HarderChris YoungAdrianne MillerFred “Dave” ClarkWilliam WaltersJames Brian CruzSalomon MelgenIn addition, President Trump commuted the sentences to time served for the following individuals: Jeff Cheney, Marquis Dargon, Jennings Gilbert, Dwayne L. Harrison, Reginald Dinez Johnson, Sharon King, and Hector Madrigal, Sr. More

On the campaign trail, Joe Biden quoted the following words of his favourite poet, Seamus Heaney: “Hope for a great sea change / on the far side of revenge.”As the US president-elect finally takes the oath of office in Washington DC, the rest of the world desperately needs him to effect a sea change. If his first task is to reunite a divided America, his second is to end American isolationism: to show Americans that they need the world, and show the world that we still need America.Given the intertwined triple threats of the pandemic, economic collapse and climate catastrophe, his presidency will be defined not by the previous benchmarks of 100 days, but rather by its first 10 or 20 days. The Trump impeachment trial notwithstanding, day one will see Biden delivering on his plans to roll out mass vaccination and to reboot the ailing US economy by forcing the biggest fiscal stimulus in history through Congress. Given that body’s new political makeup and Biden’s own inclinations, his multi-trillion-dollar plan will be greener than anything ever contemplated by US lawmakers.But Biden must then go global. His presidency will be forged or broken on the anvil of those existential crises, and the internationalist in him knows that not one of these three domestic objectives – a virus-free, an economically resilient and a pollution-free US – can be fully realised without multilateral cooperation. Yet this is something that economic nationalists in both the US’s main political parties have not just rejected but scorned.Once, in the unipolar world immediately after the cold war, the US acted multilaterally (think of the global coalition that ousted Iraq from Kuwait 30 years ago). Recently, in a multipolar world, it has been acting unilaterally. Breaking with the aggressive populist nationalism of the Trump years will not be easy.So we should not expect a rerun of the lofty “go anywhere, pay any price” internationalism of the past. This thinking was once so dominant that John F Kennedy’s inaugural address in 1961 made scarcely any mention of domestic concerns. Nor should we expect any attempt by Biden to repeat Bill Clinton’s global Third Way of the 1990s – an over-triumphalist attempt, at a time of undisputed American hegemony, to lock every country into an updated “Washington consensus”.Now, in a world where there are many competing centres of power, and two and a half centuries after its Declaration of Independence, the United States needs a more modest “declaration of interdependence”.In language that will, on first hearing, seem protectionist, Biden will repeat his campaign statements that American foreign policy must now be determined by its domestic priorities. But because eliminating the virus, rebuilding commerce and trade and dealing with the climate crisis all depend on working more closely with other countries, the new president will abandon the walls, the tariffs and the xenophobia of the Trump years for a policy more “alliances first” than “America first”. And the Biden I came to know from working with him during the global financial crisis will not only be the most Atlanticist of recent presidents, but will make the most of his reputation as the great conciliator.Biden should immediately telephone the Italian prime minister – the current chairman of the G20 group of nations – and propose he urgently convene a summit of world leaders to coordinate emergency global action on each of the health, economic and environmental crises.The president-elect knows that immunising the US will not be enough to protect its citizens as long as poor countries cannot afford vaccinations and the virus continues to mutate and potentially reinfect those previously immunised. The US and Europe should lead a consortium of G20 countries to cover the estimated $30bn (£22bn) shortfall in funds needed to vaccinate the entire world. This is a bargain compared with the trillions in economic activity that will be lost if the pandemic rages on or, once contained, returns.Even before Covid, the US, like all advanced economies, was facing a high-unemployment low-growth decade, and no major economy – or developing-world nation – will fully recover the reduced output and lost jobs of 2020 unless and until there is a synchronised global plan that lifts growth.In today’s low-inflation and low-interest-rate environment, there is a global surplus of savings waiting to be invested, and public investment that boosts productivity will pay for itself by creating a virtuous circle of consumer demand, growth and rising tax revenues.I know from my experience during the global financial crisis that if the US, Europe and Asia agree to coordinate their fiscal stimuli, the multiplier effect – the spillover from increased trade and consumption – will be twice as effective in delivering growth as if each bloc acts on its own.The dividend from heightened cooperation could be upwards of 20 million much-needed jobs – and that boost could be even bigger if President Biden overturned President Trump’s objections to emergency aid for Africa and the developing world. What could become a 21st-century Marshall plan could include debt relief; the creation of $1.2tn of new international money through what are called special drawing rights; and matching funds for health, education and poverty reduction from the IMF and World Bank.Biden, who will rejoin the Paris climate accords this week, should also announce that he will attend this December’s Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow. He has already said that the 2020s may be our last chance to avoid catastrophic global warming. His domestic energy initiatives will be welcome, but not enough. The transition to a net-zero carbon economy is the greatest international endeavour of our times, and the US and Europe must now lead, persuading all countries, rich and poor, to implement a global green new deal and agree carbon reduction targets for 2030.Trump’s abject failures and his legacy, a more insecure world, present Biden with another historic opportunity. The Joe Biden I know will signal his determination to stand up to Chinese illiberalism and Russian opportunism. He will act quickly to secure a revamped Iranian treaty that not only constrains Tehran’s nuclear ambitions but also tackles its sponsorship of terrorism.But underpinning these immediate imperatives is a profound generational challenge. Since the 1980s, when Biden went to Moscow to help Ronald Reagan secure his nuclear weapons reductions deal with President Gorbachev, he has been in the forefront of demands for nuclear disarmament. I believe Biden could be the first president of the nuclear age to declare and deliver a “no first use” policy on nuclear weapons. By also negotiating global bans on both nuclear testing and the enrichment of uranium, his presidency could usher in a decade of disarmament. These historic steps would pave the way for the renunciation by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Turkey of any nuclear aspirations, the further isolation of North Korea, and the downgrading of the role of nuclear weapons on the road to their eventual elimination.Not since Franklin Roosevelt, nearly 90 years ago, has a US president come to office amid so many pressing crises and so loud a clamour for change. FDR’s words on his inaugural day, a powerful call to “action and action now”, apply with equal force to these perilous days. And President Biden knows it. His task is no less than, as Seamus Heaney put it, to “make hope and history rhyme”.• Gordon Brown was UK prime minister from 2007 to 2010. His latest book, Seven Ways to Change the World, will be published by Simon & Schuster this summer More