US Politics

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The US government’s policy of separating migrant families at the border has continued to wreak havoc and inflict suffering in the final months of Donald Trump’s presidency, with parents still missing, reunifications blocked and reunited families struggling to pick up the pieces of their lives.
Righting the wrongs of Trump’s globally condemned separations policy is one of the most urgent and challenging tasks that lies ahead for the incoming administration. Civil rights groups that have been fighting for years to reunite thousands of families are now pushing for a bold and speedy response from Joe Biden – one that reunifies victims, grants them protection in the US, and provides restitution.
“We tortured these families, we took their children,” said Carol Anne Donohoe, the managing attorney with Al Otro Lado, a group that has been working to reunite deported parents with their children. “Some parents and children haven’t seen each other in over three years. It’s an abomination, and we need immediate action … and accountability to ensure this never happens again.”
A critical step, advocates say, will be a full accounting of the scope of family separations, and recognition by the government of the enduring consequences.
The cruelty and chaos of ‘zero tolerance’
In April 2018, the Trump administration announced a “zero tolerance” policy to prosecute all unauthorized crossings at the border, making no exception for asylum seekers or people with children. As a result, US immigration officials forcibly separated children from their parents and guardians, filing thousands of criminal cases against migrants who had fled violence to seek asylum in America. The parents were detained while their children were taken and treated as “unaccompanied minors”, placed in jails and shelters for migrant youth.
“It just felt like chaos,” recalled Roberto Lopez, the community outreach coordinator with the Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP), who was working in south Texas courtrooms where hundreds of separated parents faced criminal charges in an assembly line. “It was a mass prosecution … There was just so much pain. Many times they were asking, ‘Do you know where my kid is? When will I see them?’ And we had to tell them again and again, ‘We don’t know.’” More

On Wednesday, the Republicans’ transition to the party of the Confederacy will be complete. A day after Georgia’s runoff elections, at least a dozen lawmakers in the Senate and more than half of the party’s House membership will seek to overturn the results of the 2020 election and disenfranchise the majority of US voters. A coup attempt in all but name, this is how democracy dies.Sadly, a statement issued on Saturday by seven sitting senators and four senators-elect dispelled any doubts about the nexus between the end of the US civil war, more than 150 years ago, and Donald Trump’s desperate attempt to cling to power. Predictably, America’s racial divide again stands front and center.After regurgitating for the umpteenth time unproven and unsubstantiated charges of electoral fraud, the senators invoked the election of 1876. Back then, the Democrats contested the outcome, conceding after the Republicans agreed to halt Reconstruction.As framed by Ted Cruz and his posse, “the most direct precedent” for their actions “arose in 1877, following serious allegations of fraud and illegal conduct in the Hayes-Tilden presidential race”. In their telling, “elections in three states” were “alleged to have been conducted illegally”. Left unsaid is that after the end of Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the toxic legacy of “separate but equal” followed.To these Republicans the right to vote is only for some of the people, some of the timeTo quote Mississippi’s William Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Senators from states that were part of the Confederacy, or territory where slaveholding was legal, provide the ballast for Cruz’s demands. At least one senator each from Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas is on board.Apparently, Trump’s defeat at the hands of Joe Biden, formerly vice-president to the first black man in the White House, and Kamala Harris, a black woman, is too much for too many to bear. Said differently, to these Republicans the right to vote is only for some of the people, some of the time – those people being this president’s supporters.Trump’s equivocation over Charlottesville, his debate shoutout to the Proud Boys and his worship of dead Confederate generals are of the same piece. The vestiges of an older and crueler social order are to be maintained, at all costs.Likewise, the reluctance of Trump appointees to the federal judiciary to affirm the validity of Brown v Board of Education, the supreme court ruling that said school segregation was unconstitutional, is a feature not a bug.As for the Declaration of Independence’s pronouncement that “All men are created equal”, and the constitution’s guaranty of equal protection under law, they are inconveniences to be discarded when confronted by dislocating demographics.“Stand back and stand by,” indeed.Since the civil war, there has always been a southern party, frequently echoing strains of the old, slave-owning south. Practically, that has meant hostility towards civil rights coupled with wariness towards modernity.To be sure, southern did not automatically equal neo-Confederate, but the distinction could easily get lost. And to be sure, the Democrats were initially the party of the south. During debate over the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Republicans gave Lyndon Johnson the votes he needed. Not anymore.Cruz and Josh Hawley, the Missouri senator who kicked off the attempt to deny the electoral college result, are the products of places like Harvard, Stanford and Yale. John C Calhoun, the seventh vice-president, argued in favor of slavery and the right of states to secede. He went to Yale too. Joseph Goebbels had a doctorate from Heidelberg. An elite degree does not confer wisdom automatically.For the record, Cruz also clerked for a supreme court chief justice, William Rehnquist. Hawley did so for John Roberts.On Sunday, as the new Congress was being sworn in, a recording emerged of Trump unsuccessfully browbeating Georgia’s secretary of state into finding “11,780 votes, which is one more than we have”. From the sound of things, Trump’s fear of prosecutors and creditors, waiting for him to leave the White House, takes precedence over electoral integrity.Back in May, after Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, predicted 240,000 deaths from Covid, and as armed protests to public health measures grew, an administration insider conveyed that Trump’s America was becoming a “bit” like the “late” Weimar Republic. Eight months later, the death toll is past 350,000 and climbing unabated.Come nightfall on 6 January, the party of Abraham Lincoln will be no more. Instead, the specters of Jim Crow and autocracy will flicker. Messrs Trump, Cruz and Hawley can take a collective bow. More

Donald Trump has been recorded pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state to overturn US president-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state, in a tape obtained by the Washington Post.
The conversation is mainly between Trump and Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, but Trump allies including Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, and attorney Cleta Mitchell were also present, as was Ryan Germany, Raffensperger’s general counsel. Here are the main points:
1. Trump sought to change the election result
On the call Trump pressed Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes”.
“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” Trump said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.” He later pleaded: “So what are we going to do here folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.”
Joe Biden won Georgia. The result has been certified and Biden’s electoral college victory will be ratified by Congress on Wednesday.
2. Trump tried to intimidate Raffensperger
Trump insisted: “There’s no way I lost Georgia. There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.” He went on to suggest that Raffensperger could face a criminal investigation. “You know what they did and you’re not reporting it,” Trump said. “You know, that’s a criminal offence. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan [Germany], your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”
3. Trump applied pressure over Georgia runoffs
Trump told Raffensperger that if he did not act by Tuesday he would be harming the chances of Georgia Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in this week’s runoff elections, which will determine whether the Democrats or the Republicans control the Senate. Referring to the runoffs in the call, Trump said, “You would be respected, really respected, if this can be straightened out before the election.”
4. Raffensperger continued to stand up to Trump
Raffensperger is a Republican who has pushed back against Trump and insisted Biden’s win in Georgia was fair. Responding to Trump, he said: “Well, Mr President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”
When Trump claimed that over 5,000 ballots were cast in the state by dead people, Raffensperger responded: “The actual number was two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted.”
5. Trump may have committed a crime
The University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias said Trump might be “in legal jeopardy after Biden is inaugurated”. In an email to the Guardian, he wrote: “For example, if the justice department or US attorneys believe that Trump violated federal law, or if local prosecutors in states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin, where Trump may have engaged in similar behaviour with state or local election officials, believe that Trump violated state election laws, the federal or state prosecutors could file suit against Trump.”
Richard H Pildes, a constitutional law professor at New York University, told the Washington Post: “The president is either knowingly attempting to coerce state officials into corrupting the integrity of the election or is so deluded that he believes what he’s saying.” Trump’s actions may have violated federal statutes, he said.
Michael R Bromwich, a former federal prosecutor in the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, wrote: “Unless there are portions of the tape that somehow negate criminal intent, ‘I just want to find 11,780 votes’ and his threats against Raffensperger and his counsel violate 52 U.S. Code 20511.”
6. Trump refused to back down
On Sunday Trump tweeted: “I spoke to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger yesterday about Fulton county and voter fraud in Georgia. He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!”
Twitter labelled the tweet with the disclaimer: “This claim about election fraud is disputed” and Raffensperger responded to Trump’s claims with a tweet saying: “Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true.” More

All 10 former US defence secretaries still living, including two who worked for Donald Trump, have called for the president and his supporters to accept he lost the election and warned against attempts to involve the military in his increasingly desperate efforts to overturn the result.In an unprecedented joint letter published in the Washington Post, the defence secretaries addressed the worst fears of what could happen in 17 days of Trump’s administration remaining before Joe Biden’s inauguration: an attempt by Trump to foment a crises with the aim of triggering a military intervention in his last-ditch struggle to hold on power.“Efforts to involve the US armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory,” the letter said.“Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic.”Among the signatories were James Mattis and Mark Esper, who both served as defence secretaries in the Trump administration. Esper openly contradicted Trump in June by insisting there were no grounds for invoking the Insurrection Act, which allows for the deployment of US troops on American streets in extreme circumstances.Dick Cheney, defence secretary under George HW Bush, and vice-president to his son, George W Bush, and Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary in the younger Bush’s administration, also signed. The other signatories were William Perry and William Cohen, defence secretaries in the Bill Clinton administration; Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel and Ashton Carter, who served under Barack Obama; and Robert Gates, who served under both the younger Bush and Obama.“Transitions, which all of us have experienced, are a crucial part of the successful transfer of power. They often occur at times of international uncertainty about US national security policy and posture,” the former defence secretaries wrote. “They can be a moment when the nation is vulnerable to actions by adversaries seeking to take advantage of the situation.”They called on the current defence secretary, Christopher Miller, and his officials to resume cooperation with the Biden transition team, who had complained their briefings had been cut off and the Pentagon had ceased answering their inquiries.The Washington Post quoted Eric Edelman, a former US ambassador and defence official, as saying the genesis of the remarkable letter was a conversation he had with Cheney about how the military might be used in coming days.There are concerns over unrest on Wednesday when a dozen Republican senators say they will challenge the normally routine congressional ratification of the electoral college result.Trump has urged his supporters to rally in Washington, tweeting: “Be there, will be wild!” The far right Proud Boys are expected to be among the pro-Trump crowd in the capital.Cohen told the Post he was concerned by the mention of the possibility of martial law by the former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, especially after Trump’s use of the military and other federal forces to remove protesters outside the White House in June.“It’s a very dangerous course of action that needs to be called out before it happens,” Cohen said.“[It is] so important to see the country’s secretaries of defence sending this message,” wrote Risa Brooks, a Marquette University associate professor studying civil-military relations and political violence. “The civilians who run the military need to be front and centre in conveying this message to the public and not leave it to the military alone.” More

In an hour-long phone call on Saturday, Donald Trump pressed Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to overturn Joe Biden’s victory there in the election the president refuses to concede.The Washington Post obtained a tape of the “extraordinary hour-long call”, which Trump acknowledged on Twitter.Amid widespread outrage including calls for a second impeachment, Bob Bauer, a senior Biden adviser, said: “We now have irrefutable proof of a president pressuring and threatening an official of his own party to get him to rescind a state’s lawful, certified vote count and fabricate another in its place.”The Post published the full call.“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” Trump said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”Raffensperger is a Republican who has become a bête noire among Trump supporters for repeatedly saying Biden’s win in his state was fair. In one of a number of parries, he said: “Well, Mr President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”Trump said: “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”He also insisted: “There’s no way I lost Georgia. There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”Trump’s contempt for democracy is laid bare. Once again. On tapeTrump did not win Georgia, which went Democratic for the first time since 1992. Its result has been certified. Attempts to pressure Republicans in other battleground states have failed, as have the vast majority of challenges to results in court.Despite promised objections from at least 12 Republican senators and a majority of the House GOP, Biden’s electoral college victory will be ratified by Congress on Wednesday. The Democrat will be inaugurated as the 46th president on 20 January. Trump will then leave the White House – where he remained, tweeting angrily, all weekend.Edward B Foley, an Ohio State law professor, told the Post the call was “‘inappropriate and contemptible’ and should prompt moral outrage”. Trump’s behaviour was “already tripping the emergency meter,” he added. “So we were at 12 on a scale of one to 10, and now we’re at 15.”In an email to the Guardian, University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias said: “The conduct that the press has reported might place Trump in legal jeopardy after Biden is inaugurated.“For example, if the justice department or US attorneys believe that Trump violated federal law or if local prosecutors in states, such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin, where Trump may have engaged in similar behaviour with state or local election officials, believe that Trump violated state election laws, the federal or state prosecutors could file suit against Trump.”Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, went further, calling for Trump to be impeached a second time, even though he has little more than two weeks left in office.“The president of the United States has been caught on tape trying to rig a presidential election,” Bookbinder said. “This is a low point in American history and unquestionably impeachable conduct. It is incontrovertible and devastating.“When the Senate acquitted President Trump for abusing his powers to try to get himself re-elected [in February 2020, regarding approaches to Ukraine for dirt on Biden], we worried that he would grow more brazen in his attempts to wrongly and illegally keep himself in power. He has … Congress must act immediately.”From Congress, in a tweet, Adam Schiff, the Democratic chair of the House intelligence committee, said: “Trump’s contempt for democracy is laid bare. Once again. On tape.”The lead prosecutor at Trump’s Senate impeachment trial last year added: “Pressuring an election official to ‘find’ the votes so he can win is potentially criminal, and another flagrant abuse of power by a corrupt man who would be a despot, if we allowed him. We will not.”Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat widely expected to be elected House speaker for a fourth term, set out her strategy for the election certification in a memo to colleagues.“Over the years,” she wrote, “we have experienced many challenges in the House, but no situation matches the Trump presidency and the Trump disrespect for the will of the people.”Adam Kinzinger, a Republican congressman from Illinois, tweeted: “This is absolutely appalling. To every member of Congress considering objecting to the election results, you cannot – in light of this – do so with a clean conscience.”Stacey Abrams is laughing about you. She’s going around saying, ‘These guys are dumber than a rock’White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Cleta Mitchell, a Republican lawyer, were also on the call, during which Trump ran through a laundry list of debunked claims regarding supposed electoral fraud and called Raffensperger a “child”, “either dishonest or incompetent” and a “schmuck”.Characteristically, Trump also threatened legal action.“You know what they did and you’re not reporting it,” he said. “You know, that’s a criminal offence. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan [Germany], your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”Referring to runoffs on Tuesday that will decide control of the Senate, Trump said Georgia had “a big election coming up and because of what you’ve done to the president – you know, the people of Georgia know that this was a scam.“Because of what you’ve done to the president, a lot of people aren’t going out to vote, and a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative, because they hate what you did to the president. OK? They hate it. And they’re going to vote. And you would be respected, really respected, if this can be straightened out before the election.”Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, seeking to beat Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, have ranged themselves behind Trump. But Georgia Republicans fear his attacks could suppress his own party’s turnout as Democrats work to boost their own.Early voting has reached unprecedented levels and on Sunday, former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams told ABC’s This Week: “What we’re so excited about is that we haven’t stopped reaching those voters. Millions of contacts have been made, thousands of new registrations have been held. We know that at least 100,000 people who did not vote in the general election are now voting in this election.”Trump told Raffensperger: “Stacey Abrams is laughing about you. She’s going around saying, ‘These guys are dumber than a rock.’”Trump also said he knew the call wasn’t “going anywhere”. Raffensperger ended the conversation.On Twitter on Sunday, Trump said Raffensperger “was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!”Twitter duly applied a standard disclaimer: “This claim about election fraud is disputed.”Raffensperger also responded: “Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true.” More

Congress convened for its 117th session on Sunday, swearing in lawmakers amid extraordinary political turmoil as Republicans worked to overturn Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump, crucial Senate runoffs in Georgia loomed and the coronavirus surge imposed severe limits on familiar Capitol ceremonies.The Democrat Nancy Pelosi was set to be re-elected as House speaker. But most attention was focused on the Senate, where Mitch McConnell could be carrying out his final acts as Republican majority leader.If Democrats John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock unseat Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in Georgia on Tuesday, the chamber will split 50-50. As vice-president, Kamala Harris would then hold a deciding vote, boosting Biden’s hopes of legislative success.In an extraordinarily acrimonious campaign, early voting has shattered runoff records, with 3m ballots cast. African American turnout, critical to the Democrats’ chances, has been robust: about a third of ballots have come from self-identified Black voters, up from around 27% in the November contests which did not produce conclusive winners.On Sunday Stacey Abrams, the defeated Democrat in the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election who now advocates for voting rights, told ABC’s This Week her party “did very well in vote by mail, we did very well in early vote, but we know election day is going to be the likely high-turnout day for Republicans, so we need Democrats who haven’t cast their ballots to turn out.“What we’re so excited about is that we haven’t stopped reaching those voters. Millions of contacts have been made, thousands of new registrations have been held. We know that at least 100,000 people who did not vote in the general election are now voting in this election.”Harris was to campaign in Georgia on Sunday, with Biden following on Monday. Trump has alarmed Republicans with attacks on GOP state officials and the integrity of the runoffs, as part of his baseless claims of electoral fraud in November. In a bombshell report, the Washington Post detailed a Saturday call in which Trump pressured Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to overturn the presidential result, saying a failure to do so could damage Republican chances in the Senate runoffs.Nonetheless, on Monday Trump will rally in support of Loeffler and Perdue.Perdue continues to quarantine after contact with a Covid-19 infected person. Nonetheless, the four candidates have been at each others’ throats.On Fox News Sunday, Loeffler, a keen Trump ally, aired allegations at Warnock regarding a child abuse investigation and domestic violence and continued to deny his claims she enriched herself in stock dealings following private Covid-19 briefings.“Why has he refused to denounce Marxism and socialism?” Loeffler said. “He’s attacked our police officers calling them gangsters, thugs and bullies, he said ‘You can’t serve God and the military’, he’s praised Fidel Castro [and] Karl Marx.”Warnock and Ossoff have seized on allegations of stock-dealing impropriety by Perdue, who dumped assets damaged by the pandemic and bought cheap stock that Covid-19 restrictions then caused to soar in value.In contests in which the Black vote is so important, race has also assumed a central role. Warnock is senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King Jr once preached. Loeffler has run attack ads using pieces of Warnock’s sermons.“The Republican attack is not just against Warnock, it’s against the Black church and the Black religious experience,” the Rev Timothy McDonald III, pastor of First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta and assistant pastor of Ebenezer from 1978 to 1984, told Reuters.McDonald described Warnock’s views as consistent with the church’s opposition to racism, police brutality, poverty and militarism.“I don’t care what you think about Warnock,” he said. “We’ve got to defend our church, our preaching, or prophetic tradition, our community involvement and engagement. We’re going to defend that.”Loeffler said in a tweet last month she was not attacking the church. “We simply exposed your record in your own words,” she wrote.Ossoff courted controversy when he recently accused Loeffler of “campaigning with a Klansman”. In fact Loeffler posed, she said unknowingly, with a former member of the far-right group.Asked on CNN’s State of the Union if it was “important for candidates to tell the truth”, Ossoff said: “It is. And it’s even more distressing that this isn’t an isolated incident.“Kelly Loeffler has repeatedly posed for photographs and been seen campaigning alongside radical white supremacists. And I believe they’re drawn to her campaign, because her campaign has consisted almost entirely of racist attacks on the Black Lives Matter movement and on the Black church.“…And it’s happening at the same time that Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue and Georgia Republicans are mounting a vicious assault on voting rights in Georgia, lawsuit after lawsuit to disenfranchise black voters, purge the rolls, remove ballot drop boxes.“And I believe that one of the reasons we’re seeing such record-shattering turnout … is that Georgians are defying those efforts to rip away their voting rights and standing up and saying, ‘We’re going to make our voices heard.’”Developments in Washington have also touched the Georgia races. Loeffler and Perdue both backed Trump’s demands for Congress to increase $600 Covid relief payments to $2,000, which McConnell blocked.Ossoff leapt on the opportunity to point out Perdue’s “hypocrisy” for opposing last year’s first relief payment of $1,200 and “obstructing” efforts to provide further direct relief for more than eight months.Whichever of the candidates wins a passage to Washington will join a new Congress already home to a politician from the extremities of Georgia politics.Among House newcomers sworn in Sunday was Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has supported the Q-Anon conspiracy theory and was among a group of Republicans who visited Trump at the White House recently, to discuss the effort to undo the election. More

All 12 Republican senators who have pledged not to ratify the electoral college results on Wednesday, and thereby refuse to confirm Joe Biden’s resounding victory over Donald Trump in the presidential election, declined to defend their move on television, a CNN host said on Sunday.
“It all recalls what Ulysses S Grant once wrote in 1861,” Jake Tapper said on State of the Union, before quoting a letter the union general wrote at the outset of a civil war he won before becoming president himself: ‘There are [but] two parties now: traitors and patriots.’
“How would you describe the parties today?” Tapper asked.
The attempt to overturn Trump’s defeat seems doomed, a piece of political theatre mounted by party grandees eager to court supporters loyal to the president before, in some cases, mounting their own runs for the White House.
Nonetheless on Saturday Ted Cruz of Texas and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin led 11 senators and senators-elect in calling for “an emergency 10-day audit” of results in states where the president claims electoral fraud, despite failing to provide evidence and repeatedly losing in court.
The senators followed Josh Hawley of Missouri – like Cruz thought likely to run for president in 2024 – in pledging to object to the electoral college result. A majority of House Republicans are also expected to object, after staging a Saturday call with Trump to plan their own moves.
Democrats control the House and senior Senate Republicans are opposed to the attempt to disenfranchise millions – many of them African Americans in swing states – seemingly guaranteeing the attempt will fail. Nonetheless, Vice-President Mike Pence, who will preside over the ratification, welcomed the move by Cruz and others.
A spokesman for Biden, Michael Gwin, said: “This stunt won’t change the fact that President-elect Biden will be sworn in on 20 January, and these baseless claims have already been examined and dismissed by Trump’s own attorney general, dozens of courts, and election officials from both parties.”
Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee now a senator from Utah, said: “The egregious ploy to reject electors may enhance the political ambition of some, but dangerously threatens our democratic republic.
“…More Americans participated in this election than ever before, and they made their choice. President Trump’s lawyers made their case before scores of courts; in every instance, they failed.
“…Adding to this ill-conceived endeavour by some in Congress is the president’s call for his supporters to come to the Capitol on the day when this matter is to be debated and decided. This has the predictable potential to lead to disruption, and worse.”
Encouraged by Trump, far-right groups including the Proud Boys are expected to gather in Washington on Wednesday. More