US Politics

Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, said dozens of armed protesters gathered in a threatening manner outside her home on Saturday evening chanting “bogus” claims about electoral fraud.Michigan officials last month certified the state’s election results showing President-elect Joe Biden had won Michigan, one of a handful of key battleground states, in the course of his 3 November election victory.Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed, contrary to evidence, that the outcome was marred by widespread fraud in multiple states. State and federal officials have repeatedly stated that there is no evidence of fraud on any significant scale, and Biden is to be sworn in on 20 January.The individuals gathered outside my home targeted me as Michigan’s Chief Election officer. But their threats were actually aimed at the 5.5million Michigan citizens who voted in this fall’s election, seeking to overturn their will. They will not succeed in doing so. My statement: pic.twitter.com/RSUnPSN4Aa— Jocelyn Benson (@JocelynBenson) December 7, 2020
The protesters who rallied outside Benson’s home held up placards saying “Stop the Steal” and chanted the same message, according to various clips uploaded on social media.In a Twitter statement on Sunday, Benson said the protesters were trying to spread false information about the security and accuracy of the US election system. “The demands made outside my home were unambiguous, loud and threatening.”The Michigan attorney general, Dana Nessel, in a separate Twitter post, accused the pro-Trump demonstrators of “mob-like behavior [that] is an affront to basic morality and decency”.“Anyone can air legitimate grievances to Secretary Benson’s office through civil and democratic means, but terrorizing children and families in their own homes is not activism.”Benson added: “They targeted me in my role as Michigan’s chief election officer. But the threats of those gathered weren’t actually aimed at me – or any other elected officials in this state. They were aimed at the voters.”Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who has clashed publicly with Trump over state coronavirus restrictions, was the target of a kidnapping plot by a far-right militia group during the election campaign, prosecutors said in October.Michigan, one of a handful of key swing state in the 2020 presidential race, was a target of agitation by Trump and rightwing supporters against stay-at-home orders Whitmer imposed earlier this year to curb coronavirus transmissions. More

Suzy Young, an artist in Winterport, Maine, cheered when Congress enacted an innovative program that provided unemployment benefits to artists, freelancers and the self-employed after Covid-19 hit the US. But like many others, Young – whose art sales have plunged in recent months – is angry that this pandemic aid program is due to expire the day after Christmas.Young was already upset that the most generous part of the program – $600 a week in supplemental jobless benefits – expired in July, but now she fears she will lose all her jobless benefits. Four months behind on her $1,800 rent, she is fighting her landlord’s effort to evict her and her disabled husband on 1 January.“Congress needs to do something, or a lot of people are going to face homelessness,” said Young, 58. A fiber artist who weaves works out of wool, Young saw her income disappear when the farmers market where she sold her work was closed due to the lockdown. “That killed my business,” she said. She was getting by while receiving the $600 weekly supplement, but once that disappeared, her unemployment benefits fell to $172 a week.A study by the Century Foundation estimates that 7.3 million freelancers, artists, self-employed and others will lose their weekly benefits if the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program (known as PUA) expires, as scheduled, after Christmas. That program is unusual because jobless benefits traditionally go only to laid-off workers who are considered employees – and not to freelancers or the self-employed. A second program – Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation – is also scheduled to expire 26 December, ending special federal benefits for 4.6 million laid-off workers who were considered employees.“A lot of these people [freelancers and the self-employed] were out of work, and not eligible for regular unemployment benefits,” said Andrew Stettner, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation. “This program has been really successful. These people really need this bridge until the economy gets back to a better place.” After the $600 benefit supplement expired in July, freelancers and the self-employed continued receiving regular unemployment benefits, but the average nationwide for them has been just $207 a week, although it’s two or three times that in some states.Last Tuesday, a bipartisan group of nine senators proposed a $908bn stimulus and relief package that included a $300 weekly jobless supplement, half the former $600. The senators said their plan “would increase unemployment benefits to help families make ends meet”. That same day, five Democratic senators, including the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, proposed a relief plan that would restore the $600 boost in benefits as well as extend normal jobless benefits by 26 weeks. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, threw cold water on the bipartisan plan, saying: “We just don’t have time to waste time.”Rafael Espinal, president of the 500,000-member Freelancers Union, said the senators’ $300-a-week proposal was inadequate. “Considering the cost of living in cities, $300 isn’t going to allow people to pay their rent or meet other demands.”Grant McDonald, a New York-based video director who films concerts and special events, has had little work since March and worries about PUA expiring. “It’s pretty drastic sitting here, waiting for my savings to run out,” he said. McDonald fears he will soon fall behind on his rent; he may then move in with his father.“I have worked very hard to build a career in this city,” McDonald said, worried that leaving New York will set back his career.McDonald and Stephanie Freed, who lights fashion shows and other special events, founded ExtendPUA, a group that has lobbied dozens of senators and representatives to extend pandemic assistance and restore the $600 supplement. Many Republicans oppose the $600 level, saying it costs too much and discourages people from seeking work.We need to help people out here from starving. We need Congress to hear us, we’re in the worst placeBut ExtendPUA argues that it’s not wise to press people to look for work when the pandemic is raging or when skilled people with long careers, on Broadway, for instance, have little idea when they’ll return to regular work.“Any economist will say you don’t want skilled people to give up their work and not be able to get back to what they’ve given up,” Stettner said. “We can see that the vaccine will make everything better, and if we can just extend these benefits a little longer, it will make a big difference for a lot of people. If you lose your car or get evicted, those are not easy things to recover from.”Steve Gregg stopped working as an Uber driver in San Francisco after Covid-19 hit – he has diabetes and lung problems. Greg said the $600 supplement, on top of his $450 in regular weekly jobless benefits, “saved me, I would have lost my home”. But with the $600 expired, Gregg, divorced and paying child support, has moved into a single room in Modesto he shares with a cousin. “If they want us not to be homeless, they better pass something,” Gregg said. “I have no flexibility. I’ve cut back on many things.”Friends tell Gregg he has an extraordinary voice and should do TV voiceovers, but he doesn’t have the several hundred dollars to go to a studio to prepare a proper sample recording.Shan Grimm, a guitarist for jazz and R&B bands in New Orleans, fears she and her daughter will be evicted once the moratorium on evictions ends. She receives $247 a week in jobless benefits, but her rent is $850 a month, her car insurance $193 and her phone $60. “I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do, where I’m going to go,” said Grimm, who also worked as a bartender. “Even $300 a week would make a big difference. Right now, I’m in panic mode. I have $107 in my bank account. I’ve been eating once a day.”“We are the people and Congress needs to hear us,” Grimm added. “We need to help people out here from starving. We need Congress to hear us, we’re in the worst place.” More

Joe Biden has had a fairly smooth cabinet appointment process so far, but there are rumblings that it could get choppier, and speculation that the Democratic president-elect may take a leaf out of the Donald Trump playbook to try to get the team he wants.Publicly, Democrats are hopeful that the confirmation processes for all of Biden’s cabinet nominees will go smoothly. But looming over the Biden team’s planning is the possibility that Republicans in the Senate decide to stonewall a nominee, blocking confirmation of anyone Biden puts forward.Their ability to do that will rest on who wins two Senate runoff races in Georgia. If Democrats win, they wrest control of the vital upper chamber away from Republicans. But if Republicans triumph, it raises the prospect they can stonewall any Biden nominee for a specific cabinet position.In that scenario, one option for Democrats would be to follow Donald Trump’s example and controversially install cabinet officials under the “acting” moniker, where they are not confirmed but serve in that role regardless.In the later period of his administration, Trump made a habit of appointing acting heads to federal agencies, thereby circumventing the usual confirmation process, even with Republicans controlling the Senate.“Frankly, it’s not an unhelpful precedent,” a Senate Democratic aide said of the idea of Biden appointing acting cabinet secretaries in the face of a Republican blockade.If Democrats control the Senate, the Senate majority will almost certainly move in lockstep to confirm Biden’s nominees as a demonstration of the incoming president’s promise to “lower the temperature” of American politics. If Republicans control the chamber, gumming up confirmations is a tempting way to generate leverage with a new president who has promised to work with the opposing party.It’s unclear which of Biden’s nominees Republicans will find most objectionable.So far, the most opposition Republicans have sounded on any of Biden’s nominees has been over Neera Tanden, the president of the progressive Center for American Progress. Biden nominated Tanden to run the Office of Management and Budget. Drew Brandewie, the communications director for the Texas senator John Cornyn, one of the highest-ranking Republicans in the Senate, tweeted that Tanden has “zero chance” of getting confirmed.Neera Tanden, who has an endless stream of disparaging comments about the Republican Senators’ whose votes she’ll need, stands zero chance of being confirmed. https://t.co/f6Ewi6OMQR— Drew Brandewie (@DBrandewie) November 30, 2020
The Ohio senator Rob Portman, a former OMB director, told reporters he supported a hearing for Tanden but that she is “problematic as a nominee, and I would hope the Biden administration would reconsider nominating her.”If Republicans retain control of the Senate, Portman will chair one of the committees that handles Tanden’s nomination.Republicans are expected to aggressively fight at least a few of Biden’s nominees, not just Tanden. Conservatives have already started to signal a critical interest in the dealings of the consulting firm the secretary of state nominee Tony Blinken helped co-found, WestExec Advisers.Biden transition team officials, congressional Democrats, and veterans of the process are hesitant to think about a worst-case scenario like a Senate blockade over multiple nominees. The Biden transition team has set a goal of meeting with every member of Congress, according to a Biden transition official. The team is also in the process of setting up meetings between nominees and senators, the official said, a sign that the incoming administration still hopes it can engineer some bipartisan support.“Over the course of just the last eight days, President-elect Biden has put forward a group of experienced and committed nominees who will rebuild our relationships in the world and build back our economy,” the Biden transition team spokesman, Sean Savett, said in a statement.He added: “The process of engaging with Democratic and Republican members and offices is already well under way and it will only pick up in the weeks ahead. While we fully expected disagreement with some members of the Senate, we have no doubt that the American people fully expect the consideration and confirmation of qualified nominees.”Phil Schiliro, the former White House director for legislative affairs during the Obama administration, said he expected the confirmation period for Biden’s nominees to be similar to past ones.“I don’t think it’ll be aberrational,” Schiliro said. “In part because we’ve just had an aberrational presidency where norms have been broken repeatedly, and I think there are Republican senators who have had a real problem with that whether they can articulate it or not is one thing. But there’s been a real norm where there comes to confirmations for the cabinet that’d be done expeditiously and professionally and I would expect that’s going to happen again.”The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, the highest-ranking Republican official in the chamber, for example, broke longtime precedent on supreme court nominees when he refrained from allowing a hearing on Barack Obama’s pick of Merrick Garland. More recently, he went back on his own logic for refraining from holding hearings on Garland when Republicans quickly moved Amy Coney Barrett through the Senate’s hearings.In other words, there’s precedent for McConnell and the current crop of Republican leadership to buck longstanding Senate traditions. It’s also normal for a few cabinet nominees to not make it through the confirmation process.Schiliro noted though that Biden has a “history of good relationships with the Senate even though the Senate has changed a lot. There’s still a fair amount of members he has good relations with and there’s goodwill and trust.” More

Joe Biden, you may have heard, is hiring a lot of women. During his campaign, he promised to appoint the most diverse cabinet in American history. So far, he has hired an all-female communications team and lined up several other women for senior jobs, some of which have never been filled by a woman before. As with the selection of his vice-president, Kamala Harris, the reception has been rapturous. What better way to fumigate Trumpism than by filling the executive with qualified women in senior positions? “There goes the old boys’ club,” says NBC. An article in the Washington Post lists four reasons why Biden’s cabinet should be 50% women: he owes it to them; it looks bad when other countries such as Finland and South Africa have got there first; qualified women are easy to find; and finally, it’s just about damn time.Behind the scenes, there is pressure on Biden to make good on racial diversity and appoint more people of colour in general. Some Democratic members of Congress have called for at least five more Latinos to be appointed to senior cabinet positions. Asian American and Pacific Islander lawmakers have written that it will be “deeply disappointing if several AAPIs are not nominated”. Like victors dividing the spoils of war, a diverse array of Americans is scrambling to stake a claim in the new administration.This could be the start of something positive. But it could equally be a dead end. Diversity has two paths. The first is one important means with which to address the structural inequalities that produce the marginalisation of those groups in the first place. The second is an end in itself. In a sort of identity relay race, women and people of colour are handed the baton, carry on running, and serve to bless and reinforce the racial and economic status quo.Increasingly, liberals are opting for the latter: a commitment to diversity that promises cosmetic changes without deeper transformation. This is part of an attitude that has already hurt the Democratic party severely among Asian Americans and Latinos – groups that have, electorally, been treated as monoliths and taken for granted.According to Harris, Biden’s words to her were a clincher when considering the job. “When Joe asked me to be his running mate, he told me about his commitment to making sure we selected a cabinet that looks like America – that reflects the very best of our nation. That is what we have done.”Biden’s diverse picks, the “very best of the nation”, are not representatives of the people who put them into office as much as they are figureheads. They are ambassadors with no brief other than to stand as proof of meritocracy – if you work hard and are “the very best”, you too can get a great gig. Diversity in government isn’t about solidarity, it’s used as proof of the soundness of the system: the elevation of women in particular as “girl boss feminists” who will not be interrupted, the reduction of the deeply serious business of government to inspiration politics.It’s irritating and it’s infantilising, but it can’t be dismissed. There is real value in inspiration politics. To be able to see people who look like you in exclusive places is undoubtedly important. It unlocks confidence and ambition. And there is political capital in caring about the brand of the party and its reputation as inclusive. But when it all stops there what we end up with is a counterfeit form of liberation politics that achieves little beyond letting parties (and businesses) get away with a smattering of new faces.In a clear-eyed piece on Harris in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Solomon Jones emphasises that after a disappointing eight years of Barack Obama, the black community needs to see more than just symbolic appointments. “We’ve seen this movie before,” writes Jones. “I am a registered Democrat, but I am also an avowed realist. Putting Black and brown faces up front while repeatedly uttering the phrase ‘racial justice’ does not stop discrimination in lending, employment, education, criminal justice, or any of the myriad systems that treat people of colour unfairly.”When people are hired to make a government “look” a certain way, by governing parties with conservative politics, it’s usually a way of making change so everything stays the same – or gets worse. Little demonstrates that more than the “most diverse parliament in history” that came to Westminster in 2019. The election of a number of female and black and minority ethnic MPs to the Conservative party, and their rise in the ranks of the cabinet, has produced a government that feels more comfortable in doubling down on policies such as the hostile environment, and where senior BAME ministers have been recruited to the task of denying structural racism.The clue to the lack of potential in Biden’s diversity drive is in the fact that these appointments so far have been received with relief as a return to business as usual. Brendan Buck, an ex-adviser to the former Republican House speaker, Paul Ryan, tweeted: “These Biden nominations and appointments are so delightfully boring.” Analysts at Politico wrote that Biden’s team picks so far are characterised by their belief in a “linear, plodding, purposeful and standard policy process”. We cannot forget that it was under the “standard” and comparatively “boring” Obama administration that the Black Lives Matter movement started. Diversity in this form is a phantom lever, a device that is unconnected to any mechanisms of power but gives the illusion of change.In the euphoria of Donald Trump’s defeat among liberals, I noted on social media an impatience with those who didn’t join in the festivities. “Some people are never happy,” the celebrants complained. If our expectations have been so severely lowered that we are to be grateful for the mere presence of visual diversity in regimes that have failed us for so long, then there is indeed very little to celebrate.• Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist More

The Democratic challenger for a US Senate seat in Georgia debated against an empty lectern as Senator David Perdue, the Republican incumbent, declined to participate in the debate against Democrat Jon Ossoff ahead of the runoff election. ‘Your senator is refusing to answer questions and debate his opponent because he believes he shouldn’t have to,’ Ossoff said on the debate stage, standing beside Perdue’s empty lectern. ‘He believes the senate seat belongs to him. The senate seat belongs to the people’
Georgia runoff debate: senator Kelly Loeffler refuses three times to accept Biden victory
Trump’s attacks on election integrity ‘disgust me’, says senior Georgia Republican More

Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has tested positive for Covid-19, the president tweeted on Sunday.
Giuliani, 76 and a former mayor of New York City, has been leading Trump’s attempt to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden, through lawsuits in battleground states.
Trump did not specify when Giuliani tested positive or if he was experiencing symptoms. Giuliani did not immediately comment. Citing an anonymous source, the New York Times reported that Giuliani was being treated at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington DC.
“Rudy Giuliani, by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, and who has been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the USA, has tested positive for the China Virus,” Trump tweeted, using a racist term for the coronavirus.
“Get better soon Rudy, we will carry on!!!”
Hours before Trump made the announcement, Giuliani was interviewed on Fox News. He appeared in good spirits while sharing baseless claims of election fraud during the 10-minute interview.
Though Giuliani is at high risk of complications from the virus because of his age, he has been traveling frequently in the aftermath of the election, often appearing in public without a mask.
Last week, he appeared maskless before state lawmakers in Michigan, to challenge votes in the state. On Thursday, he spoke at the Georgia capitol building in a crowded legislative session, again without a mask.
In the Michigan session, Giuliani asked one witness to remove her mask so the audience could hear her better, though she declined.
Giuliani has repeatedly been exposed to be others who tested positive, including after his son, Andrew.
A White House staffer, Andrew Giuliani said on 20 November he had tested positive for the virus and was in quarantine with mild symptoms.
Trump himself contracted Covid-19 in October, spending three days in hospital near Washington DC.
At least 40 people in the president’s orbit have tested positive since late September, including first lady Melania Trump, her son Barron, Donald Trump Jr, and senior aides and Republican politicians.
Vaccines are on the brink of approval for use but the pandemic has surged in recent months, as Trump has faced criticism for apparently giving up the fight for control.
Johns Hopkins University recorded 213,875 new cases in the US on Saturday. Amid figures worsened by Thanksgiving travel and gatherings whose full impact experts say is not yet apparent, there were 2,254 new deaths, making the full US death toll 280,979 from nearly 14.6m cases. The seven-day average for deaths from Covid-19 has climbed over 2,000.
Trump has repeatedly downplayed the coronavirus and resisted public health guidance meant to prevent the spread of the illness.
As Christmas approaches, the White House is hosting a string of holiday parties featuring large crowds indoors. Photos from a party on Tuesday showed people without masks engaging in the festivities.
On Sunday, a member of the White House coronavirus taskforce, Deborah Birx, was questioned about the contradictions between Trump’s actions and comments and public health guidance.
“I hear community members parroting back those situations, parroting back that masks don’t work, parroting back that we should work towards herd immunity, parroting back that gatherings don’t result in super-spreading events,” Birx told NBC’s Meet the Press.
“And I think our job is to constantly say those are myths.” More

Against the backdrop of a pandemic and an acrimonious election, a group of acclaimed actors were on Sunday set to stage an online reading of an appropriate religious text: the Book of Job.Groundhog Day star Bill Murray was cast as Job, the righteous man tested by the loss of his health, home and children.Staged on Zoom, the reading was aimed at Knox county, a Republican-leaning area of Ohio, and designed to spark conversation across spiritual and political divides. The structure of a reading followed by dialogue is a fixture of Theater of War Productions, whose artistic director, Bryan Doerries, went to Kenyon College in Knox county.Theater of War held its first Job reading in Joplin, Missouri, a year after a tornado killed more than 160 there in 2011. The company has performed more than 1,700 readings worldwide, harnessing Greek drama and other resonant texts.By using Job’s story “as a vocabulary for a conversation, the hope is that we can actually engender connection, healing,” Doerries said. “People can hear each other’s truths even if they don’t agree with them.”The cast headlined by Murray featured other noted actors including Frankie Faison and David Strathairn. But Matthew Starr, mayor of the Knox county town of Mount Vernon, was cast as Job’s accuser. The Republican, a supporter of Donald Trump, said he hoped the event could lead to less shouting and more listening.“God does not say that bad things aren’t going to happen but he does tell us, when they do, we’re not alone,” Starr said. “That’s the hope for me, is that we get a chance to lean into our faith, we get a chance to lean into our neighbors, we get a chance to lean into each other, our family, a little bit more.”Knox county, a community of about 62,000, lies about an hour east of the Ohio state capital, Columbus. Most in the county work blue-collar manufacturing jobs. The county is 97% white and voted for Trump by nearly three to one. An exception is Kenyon College, a small liberal arts school outside Mount Vernon. Voters there and in the village of Gambier voted eight to one for Joe Biden.Marc Bragin, Jewish chaplain at Kenyon, said he hoped the reading would help people look beyond their differences. Pastor LJ Harry said he did not believe Knox county is as divided as other places in the US. The police chaplain and pastor at the Apostolic Church of Christ in Mount Vernon said most in the area were united in their support for Trump and for law enforcement.Harry said the biggest point of contention was over mask-wearing, with many resisting Republican governor Mike DeWine’s statewide mandate. He also likened Knox county’s need for healing to that of a patient who has left intensive care but remains in a step-down unit.Harry said the message he hoped people took from the Job reading was that “God has this in control, even though it feels like it’s out of control”.In the biblical tale, God uses Job’s losses to share broader truths about suffering. The story ends with the restoration of what was taken, and more.“Our hope is not that there’s going to be a group hug at the end of the thing,” Doerries said, “or that we’re going to resolve all our political differences, but that we can remind people of our basic humanity: what it requires to live up to basic values such as treating our neighbor as ourselves.” More