US Politics

Joe Biden announced plans to cancel student loans for 30 million borrowers on Monday, the administration’s latest push on addressing student debt before the presidential election.The plan primarily targets borrowers who have accrued a high level of interest on their debt and those who have been in repayment for at least 20 years. Borrowers who face extreme economic hardship could also see some relief.The White House said that parts of the plan could begin to take effect in the early fall, at the earliest. In addition to a waiting period to receive public comment, the administration is expecting legal challenges from Republicans that could stall the plan from going into effect.Biden touted the new plan in a speech Monday afternoon in Madison, Wisconsin, where he said “too many people feel the strain and stress” of student loans.“Today, too many Americans, especially young people, are saddled with unsustainable debts in exchange for a college degree,” Biden said. “It’s a drag on our local economy.“Now, thanks to what we’re doing, that debt is no longer holding you back.The bulk of borrowers impacted by the plan will be those who owe more than their original balance because of accumulated interest. Borrowers who make under $120,000 a year, or married borrowers who make under $240,000, will automatically receive cancellation for the amount their balance has grown because of interest, up to $20,000. This cancellation will be automatic, and the administration estimates it will impact more than 25 million borrowers.The plan also targets borrowers who have held their debt for nearly 20 years. Borrowers who started repayment on their undergraduate debt on or before 1 July 2005 or their graduate school debt on or before 1 July 2000 will see the rest of their loans forgiven. The White House estimates about 2.5 million borrowers would be affected by this.Borrowers who are facing economic hardship and are at high risk of defaulting on their loans because of economic hardship in their daily lives, for example having medical debt or child care costs, may see their debt automatically cancelled under the plan.The administration is also trying to automatically enroll borrowers who are qualified for various forgiveness programs, including the Save plan and the Public Service Loan Forgiveness plan, but have not signed up for them. The White House estimates 2 million borrowers who could see their loans forgiven have not signed up for the programs.If the plan is executed, it would bring the total number of borrowers who have seen debt relief under Biden to 30 million.Though he had promised to cancel student debt during his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden has been fighting an uphill battle to try to address student debt after the supreme court last year blocked his big plan to cancel some debt for at least 43 million borrowers, including $20,000 in cancellation for some borrowers.After the supreme court’s decision, the White House’s student debt strategy has been to specifically target groups of borrowers for relief, especially those who have held debt for multiple decades and students who attended predatory for-profit schools.The White House also launched the Save (Saving on A Valuable Education) plan, a revamped income-driven repayment plan that allows borrowers to be on track for forgiveness if they pay a set portion of their income every month.Biden on Wednesday noted that “tens of millions of people’s debt was literally about to get cancelled”.“Then some of my Republican friends, elected officials and special interests sued us, and the supreme court blocked us. But that didn’t stop us,” he said. “I mean it sincerely, we continue to find alternatives past student debt repayments that are not challengeable.” More

Authorities say they have arrested an alleged arsonist accused of setting the US senator Bernie Sanders’ Burlington, Vermont, office on fire while staff worked inside – but investigators have yet to release details about a possible a motive.A justice department notification published on Sunday said Shant Soghomonian, 35, had been charged with using fire to damage the building but did not include any reason for his alleged actions.Soghomonian, who has also gone by the first name Michael, was listed as being from Northridge, California. He allegedly entered the building on Friday morning, went to the third floor where Sanders’ offices are situated, and sprayed the entry door with an accelerant.He then set fire to the door with a handheld lighter – all in view of a security camera that was recording video, the justice department said.Soghomonian then left through a staircase as the fire spread, damaging the door and triggering the sprinkler system. Several employees were in the progressive senator’s office at the time, though no injuries were reported.The Burlington police department said the fire engulfing the door and part of the vestibule had impeded “staff members who were working in the office” from exiting, which endangered their lives.In a statement to CNN, Sanders said: “I am deeply grateful to the swift, professional, coordinated efforts of local, state, and federal law enforcement in response to the fire at my Vermont office.” The independent senator who votes in line with Democrats added that he was grateful none of his staff had been injured while describing his office’s commitment to serve those in his home state of Vermont “during these challenging times”.If convicted, Soghomonian could face between five and 20 years in prison as well as up to a $250,000 fine, according to the justice department.While no motive has been advanced for Soghomonian’s alleged actions, the arson attack comes as implied threats of political violence are becoming a feature of the 2024 presidential and congressional elections.Politicians on both sides of the aisle have in recent months been subjected to anonymous calls to law enforcement that invite an armed, potentially forceful emergency response.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn early January, it was reported that at least three members of Congress had reported “swatting” incidents over the previous week, including Representative Brandon Williams of New York, Senator Rick Scott of Florida, and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, all Republicans.Maine’s Democratic secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, who ruled that Donald Trump should be ineligible to appear on the state’s 2024 primary ballot after the former president’s supporters attacked Congress on 6 January 2021, was also the target of a swatting call.The US supreme court later forced Bellows to reverse her decision. More

Donald Trump will seek to mount federal investigations and prosecutions of Joe Biden and his family if Trump wins re-election this year, the news site Axios reported.“Everything you have seen from the Biden Department of Justice you can expect to see from the Trump DoJ,” a source “close to the Trump campaign” was quoted as saying.Another “Trump ally” said current federal charges against Trump were all the precedent Trump would need to prosecute Biden in turn.Trump is virtually certain to be the Republican nominee in November and regularly bests Biden in head-to-head polling. Trump is also performing strongly in key swing states.Trump also faces 44 federal criminal charges: 40 over his retention of classified information and four over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. His other 44 criminal charges are at the state level: 10 over election subversion in Georgia and 34 over hush-money payments in New York.Should Trump be re-elected, he could dismiss the federal charges or pardon himself. He could not rid himself of the state charges.New York, Trump’s home state until he moved to Florida after leaving the White House, is also the source of multimillion-dollar penalties in two civil cases – one over tax fraud and one concerning defamation arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Despite such unprecedented legal jeopardy – which has generated a trial schedule due to begin next Monday, in the New York hush-money case – Trump strolled to the Republican nomination to face Biden again in November.Biden was investigated for retaining classified information from his time as vice-president to Barack Obama. Unlike Trump, he co-operated with authorities. Unlike Trump, Biden was not charged.As president, Trump was impeached twice: first for blackmailing Ukraine for dirt on opponents including Biden and second for inciting the January 6 attack on Congress.House Republicans have attempted to impeach Biden over alleged corruption involving his son, Hunter Biden, but have seen such efforts descend into farce in a series of chaotic hearings.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNonetheless, Mike Davis, a former legal aide to Chuck Grassley – an Iowa senator among Republicans embarrassed when a key source of allegations against the Bidens was jailed and linked to Russian intelligence – told Axios the Bidens were guilty of “illegal foreign corruption”.“The Biden justice department will not do anything about it, so the Trump 47 justice department should,” Davis said, referring to Trump’s status as the 47th president, as well as the 45th, should he win re-election.Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee who was a manager in Trump’s second impeachment, told Axios: “In saying that they are going to enable Donald Trump’s criminal vengeance campaign, [Republicans] are taking this from a farce to tragedy.” More

Donald Trump bemoaned a lack of immigrants to the US from “nice” countries “like Denmark [or] Switzerland”, offering millionaire donors at a Florida fundraiser a reprise of infamous racist Oval Office remarks about people coming to America from “shithole countries”.Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president again, despite facing 88 criminal charges and multimillion-dollar civil penalties for tax fraud and defamation, the latter arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.According to the New York Times, which cited an unnamed attendee at the Saturday event in Palm Beach, Trump told his audience: “These are people coming in from prisons and jails. They’re coming in from just unbelievable places and countries, countries that are a disaster.“And when I said, you know, ‘Why can’t we allow people to come in from nice countries,’ I’m trying to be nice. Nice countries, you know like Denmark, Switzerland? Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?”The millionaires in the crowd “chuckled”, the Times said.Trump made his “shithole countries” remark in January 2018, in a White House meeting on immigration reform.“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump said, according to the Washington Post, which cited aides briefed on the meeting.Trump then “suggested that the US should instead bring more people from countries such as Norway [and] suggested he would be open to more immigrants from Asian countries because he felt that they help the US economically”.That kicked off a storm over Trump’s racism. Six years later, the remarks about “nice countries” reported by the Times landed in a country well used to the 45th president’s vulgarity, racism and lying.Trump is using so-called chaos at the southern US border as a central campaign issue, to the extent of directing Republicans to block bipartisan reform.On Saturday, the Times said, Trump complained of criticism over his “shithole countries” comment: “And you know, they took that as a very terrible comment, but I felt it was fine.”He also complained that migrants were coming to the US from Yemen, “where they’re blowing each other up all over the place”, and said migrants from Latin America “make the Hells Angels look like extremely nice people.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“They’ve been shipped in, brought in, deposited in our country, and they’re with us tonight. In fact, I don’t think they’re on this island, but I know they’re on that island right there. That’s West Palm. Congratulations over there. But they’ll be here. Eventually, they’ll be here.”Palm Beach, where Trump spoke at the home of a billionaire, is 93.8% white. West Palm Beach, across a waterway, is nearly a third people of color.The Times also reported that Trump claimed Joe Biden had “soiled” the Resolute desk in the Oval Office at the White House.“The attendee who witnessed the moment said that dinner guests laughed and that Mr Trump’s remark was interpreted as the former president saying that Mr Biden had defecated on the desk,” the paper said.
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In recent months, polling has generally showed President Joe Biden running behind his Republican challenger, Donald Trump, by a small margin, particularly in swing states like Georgia and Arizona. But election polling began to fluctuate after Biden’s State of the Union speech last month.The question is how much meaning observers should ascribe to polls in April, seven months ahead of the election.“We’re pretty well beyond the point where it starts becoming meaningful,” said Dave Wasserman, editor at the election-analysis newsletter the Cook Political Report. “We’re seeing a lot of variation in polls, which is not new.”Most political partisans have long made up their minds about their preferred candidate. But large numbers of voters aren’t really paying attention to the election campaigns yet.“The polling has a lot of noise because of polarization,” said Rachel Bitecofer, a political scientist, campaign strategist and author of Hit ’Em Where It Hurts. “The polling is measuring latent partisanship. … But, you know, at the end of the day, it is going to be a 50-50 race coming into election day. I don’t know why folks are having a hard time accepting that.”The discipline of political polling comes under perennial challenge every election cycle, occasionally metastasizing into cancerous error like “unskewed polls”. Pollsters try to focus on building a demographic model of the electorate that’s accurate, to weight the results of a poll correctly. If a pollster under- or overestimates the proportion of, say, Latino voters or college-educated voters or young voters on election day, a poll will reflect that error.But pollsters also treat their formulae for weighting polls like a trade secret akin to the recipe for Coca-Cola, said Louis Perron, a political strategist and author of Beat the Incumbent: Proven Strategies and Tactics to Win Elections. That lack of transparency contributes to polling error, he said.“Polls have been considerably off for many cycles. Now, after every election cycle, pollsters claim to have learned their lesson, just to be wrong again,” Perron said.“Now, in their defense, primary polling seems to be OK. Let’s wait for the general election. I mean, Trump has been seriously underestimated in many polls, as have Trump voters. So, maybe the simple reason why he’s now ahead is because he’s no longer underestimated. Maybe they have adapted the polling, and that’s why he’s now doing better than ever.”Even the most precise polling leaves room for questions. If the margin of error on a poll is 3%, that means the poll has a 95% chance to be within three points of the population surveyed. The margin of error in a poll varies inversely by the square root of the sample size. A poll of 100 voters may vary by as much as 10% from the views of a group. Polls of 1,000 people have an error rate closer to 3%.Several polls in recent months have suggested Trump is winning as much as 20% of Black voters. Most of those estimates are based on samples within larger polls that are too small to be accurate, said BlackPAC executive director Adrianne Shropshire.“It’s not reflected in our own polling,” she said. Her group polls between 600 and 1,000 Black voters at a time. “There’s nothing close to a historic shift in Black voters’ intentions.”Consider news reports about a New York Times/Siena poll last month showing Trump with 23% support among Black voters: only 119 of the respondents were Black. An Economist/YouGov poll suggested about 12% of Black voters support Trump; there, only 168 respondents were Black. A Marquette University poll cited by the Washington Post showing “at least 20 percent” Black support for Trump surveyed only 92 Black voters.A substantial decline in voters’ responsiveness to the phone calls and internet entreaties of pollsters is adding to polling challenges, Wasserman said. Fewer than 1% of pollsters’ attempts to contact voters for a poll are now successful. Those who do pick up a phone might have stronger political views than those who ignore the call.“It’s a fraction of what it used to be because respondents can screen their calls. They are getting far more spam than they used to,” he said. “Response rates are really, really low, and that creates the bigger possibility for a systemic polling error of the kind that we saw in 2016 or 2020.”But despite the gaps, polls historically trend in the right direction. Polling was fairly accurate in 2018 and 2022 – years without presidential contests, Wasserman noted.“The question is: in ’24, is there a similar hidden Trump vote? Or are polls roughly on the mark? Or is there a hidden Biden vote because Democrats are less enthusiastic about Biden than Republicans are about Trump?”Polls especially have a place in understanding where the electorate is at a point in time.“What the polls tell us is that voters aren’t necessarily enamored with Republicans. But they’re very down about Biden’s management of foreign policy, the economy, immigration – and not by small margins, by very large margins. And that’s contributing to his status as an underdog in this race.”For now, many voters are tuned out of presidential politics, particularly the “double haters” – those who dislike both Biden and Trump. And those are the voters likely to decide the election in close states.“In terms of the general public, they’re both deeply flawed general-election candidates,” Perron said. “Double haters will decide the election. Those who actually have a negative opinion about both candidates will ultimately decide the election by choosing what appears to them to be the lesser evil.” More

They don’t need Congress. The anti-abortion movement is preparing to ban abortion nationwide as soon as a Republican takes the White House, and under a bizarre legal theory, they don’t think they even need congressional approval to do it. That’s because anti-choice radicals have begun to argue that an 1873 anti-obscenity law, the Comstock Act, effectively bans the mailing, sale, advertisement or distribution of any drug or implement that can be used to cause an abortion.For a long time, this was a fringe theory, only heard in the corners of the anti-choice movement with the most misogynist zealotry and the flimsiest concerns for reason. After all, the Comstock Act has not been enforced for more than half a century: many of its original provisions, banning contraception, were overturned; other elements, banning pornography and other “obscene” material, have been essentially nullified on free speech grounds.And, for decades, its ban on abortifacients was voided by Roe v Wade. Now that the US supreme court has thrown out the national abortion right, the anti-choice movement is reviving the long-forgotten law, claiming that the Comstock Act – named after a man who hunted down pornographers, threw early feminists in jail and bragged about driving abortion providers to suicide – should still be considered good law.It’s not a solid legal theory, but like a lot of flimsily reasoned, violently sexist and once-fringe arguments, it is now getting a respectful hearing at the supreme court. At last month’s oral arguments in a case regarding the legality of the abortion drug mifepristone, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas both mentioned Comstock, implying that someone – perhaps the FDA, perhaps drug companies – was obliged to suppress abortion medication under the law. Comstock was not at issue in the mifepristone case, but the comments from the justices were not really about the case before them. Rather, they were a signal, a message meant for the conservative legal movement: if you bring us a case that seeks to ban abortion under Comstock, the judges were saying, we will vote for it.So it is a bit puzzling why, in an election year that promises to be dominated by outrage over abortion bans and the erosion of women’s rights, Democrats have not done more to convey the dangers of Comstock to the public. Admittedly, the problem is somewhat complicated and obscure, not quite the kind of thing that can fit on a bumper sticker. But voters have shown that they are willing to pay prolonged attention to the abortion issue: the continued political salience of Dobbs almost two years after the decision has proved this.Democrats have an opportunity, this election year, to corner Republicans on an unpopular issue, to make a case to the voters about the uses of giving them continued electoral power, and to articulate a vision for a modern, pluralist and tolerant society in which women can aspire to a meaningfully equal citizenship and in which ordinary citizens are endowed with the privacy and dignity to control their own sexual lives – without interference from the pantingly prurient Republican party.This election cycle, Democrats must take the obvious stand, and do what is right both in terms of politics and in terms of policy: they must call, en masse, for the repeal of the Comstock Act. Anything less would be political malpractice.It’s not as if Comstock is not being thoroughly embraced by the other side. In addition to its revival by the conservative legal movement and anti-choice activists, Comstock has found enthusiastic backers both in conservative thinktanks and among members of Congress. The rightwing Heritage Foundation cited a maximalist approach to Comstock interpretation and enforcement – and the nationwide total abortion ban that would result – as one of their priorities in their “Project 2025”, a policy plan for a coming Trump administration. Meanwhile, in an amicus brief issued to the supreme court in the mifepristone case, 119 Republican representatives and 26 Republican senators asked the court to ban abortion nationwide using Comstock.These conservatives know that their abortion bans are unpopular; they know that voters do not support the overturning of Roe v Wade, and will never vote for the total abortion bans that they aim for. This is precisely why they are seeking to achieve their ends through the judiciary, the one branch of the federal government that is uniquely immune to democratic accountability. And it is why, rather than attempting to ban abortion through the regular legislative process, they are seeking to do so via the revival of a long-forgotten statute, ignoring that Comstock has been void for decades to exploit the fact that it is technically still on the books.To their credit, a few Democratic lawmakers have begun to vocally campaign to overturn Comstock. The first was Cori Bush, of Missouri, who called for the repeal of what she termed the “zombie statute” in the hours after Comstock was mentioned at the court’s mifepristone oral arguments.She was joined days later by Senator Tina Smith, of Minnesota, who wrote in a New York Times op-ed that she wanted to repeal the law and “take away Comstock as a tool to limit reproductive freedom”. Smith says that she is working to form a coalition of Democratic House and Senate members to “build support and see what legislation to repeal the Comstock Act might look like”. Smith says that she wants to wait to see what, if anything, the supreme court says on the matter in its mifepristone decision, expected by the end of June.There is no need to wait. It is unlikely that any bill to repeal Comstock will get the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate; it is impossible that any such bill would make its way through the Republican-controlled House. But this means that Democrats have nothing to lose in waging a political campaign to draw attention to Comstock, and to force their Republican colleagues to take a stand on it. Voters deserve to know what they’re in for if a Republican captures the White House – and they deserve to know what the Republicans on their ballot think about their own rights to dignity, equality, privacy and sexual self-determination.There might be no item on the current political agenda that more aptly symbolizes the Republican worldview than Comstock. Never really workably enforced and long ignored as out of date, Comstock has come to stand in, in the rightwing imagination, for a virtuous, hierarchically ordered past that can be restored in a sexually repressive and tyrannically misogynistic future.This past never existed, not really, but the fantasy of it now has power in many corners of our law: among the reasons given by Samuel Alito in his majority opinion overturning Roe v Wade was his estimation that the right to an abortion was not “deeply rooted in America’s history and traditions”. This grimly nostalgic Republican aim to allow only those freedoms delineated in “history and tradition” would foreclose an America that adapts with time, that allows new forms of freedom to emerge from history.Comstock is a relic, and a relic is what the Republican right wants to turn America into. Democrats have a chance to make a case for it to be something else – something more like a democracy.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

The White House has pushed back on comments by World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés that Israel is engaged in “war against humanity itself” following the Israeli drone strike attack that killed seven of his aid workers on 1 April, but ruled out putting US monitors on the ground in Gaza.“There’s going to have to be some changes to the way Israeli defense forces are prosecuting these operations in Gaza to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” White House national security communications adviser John Kirby told ABC’s This Week said on Sunday.“There have to got to be changes in the deconfliction process, between aid workers on the ground and the IDF headquarters so that this kind of targeting can’t happen again,” Kirby said Sunday, but would not be drawn on claims that Israeli drone operators would have been able see the insignia three WCK vehicles carrying the workers that identified them as part of an aid convoy.In an earlier interview on This Week, Andrés had said that the IDF attack on his workers “is not anymore about the seven men and women of World Central Kitchen that perished on this unfortunate event. This is happening for way too long. It’s been six months of targeting anything that seems – moves,” Andrés said.“This doesn’t seem a war against terror,” Andrés added. “This doesn’t seem anymore a war about defending Israel. This really, at this point, seems it’s a war against humanity itself.”The IDF said Friday that there had been three strikes against the convoy, and confirmed that World Central Kitchen had coordinated their movements correctly with them in advance.It said that Israeli officials had failed to update commanders on the convoy and that they were“ convinced that they were targeting armed Hamas operatives and not WCK employees.” The strikes, the IDF added, had been “a grave mistake”.But Andrés refuted those findings, telling ABC News: “Every time something happens, we cannot just be bringing Hamas into the equation.”Asked if destroying three vehicles was following legitimate rules of engagement, Kirby said that the US knew from its own experience that “the intelligence you get, analyze and process may not always be accurate and you act on that intelligence…”But the White House adviser refused to say what consequences the US would impose if the Israel does not act on commitments to allow more humanitarian aid in and reduce violence against civilians in Gaza.“We have to judge it over time, and see if there’s a sustained and verifiable way so that confidence can be restored,” Kirby said. But against increasing calls for the US to suspend or reduce weapons transfers to Israel, Kirby echoed president Biden’s comments to Israeli prime minster Benjamin Netanyahu last week.“We’ve got to see changes in the way they are prosecuting these operations and we’re going to have to think about making changes in our own policy toward Gaza.” But, he said: “We have to remember that Israel has a right to defend itself and its important to remember they live in a tough neighborhood.”Kirby downplayed reports on Sunday that the IDF was withdrawing forces from southern Gaza, saying he would let the Israelis speak to their operations.“It’s hard to know exactly what that tells us,” he said. “This is really just about rest and refit for these troops that have been on the ground for four months – and not indicative, so far as we can tell, or some coming new operation.”“The word we’re getting is that they’re tired and need to be refit,” he added.But Kirby rejected calls for there to be US personnel on the ground in Gaza to monitor Israeli accountability to the rules of law are followed. “What we will do is make sure they have the tools and capabilities they need to defend themselves, and hold Israel accountable for the way they are conducting these operations.”Kirby said that Chef Andrés was not wrong when he said you can be a “good friend of Israel in helping them to defend themselves and at the same time holding them to an appropriate standard of accountability”.Meanwhile, one of the late aid workers’ father told Secretary of State Antony Blinken the killings by Israel in the Hamas-run territory must end, and that the United States needs to use its power and leverage over its closest Mideast ally to make that happen.John Flickinger’s 33-year-old son, Jacob Flickinger, a dual US and Canadian citizen, was among the seven humanitarian workers killed in the 1 April drone strikes.“If the United States threatened to suspend aid to Israel, maybe my son would be alive today,” John Flickinger told the Associated Press in describing his 30-minute conversation Saturday with Blinken. More

A politics reporter from the Colorado Sun was removed from the state Republican party assembly this weekend because the state party chair Dave Williams claimed her reporting on the party was “very unfair”.The reporter, Sandra Fish, who has covered politics since 1982, received a text early morning on Saturday from a Republican party organizer saying she was no longer invited to attend the assembly. Fish went anyway, receiving a credentialed pass at the door until she was asked to leave by security about an hour into the event.Video of the removal was captured by other journalists in attendance.The Colorado Republican state party chair, Dave Williams, is currently running for Congress in the state’s fifth congressional district. Fish has reported on the state party sending out a pro-Trump mailer in the district that attacked his primary opponent in the race.Williams was elected party chair in 2023 after supporting conspiracy theories that Trump won the 2020 election, and he introduced a resolution in the state house in 2022 to thank a state representative and others who participated in the January 6 insurrection.He also tried to include the “let’s go Brandon” phrase as part of his name on the 2020 ballot.The Colorado Republican state party held its state assembly in Pueblo, Colorado, this weekend where the party’s delegates met to officially choose its candidates for the November election ballot. Thousands of people reportedly attended the event.Several elected officials, including Republicans, and media outlets criticized the decision to remove the reporter from the assembly.The Republican state senator Barbara Kirkmeyer condemned the decision on social media, stating: “Sandra Fish is a fair, honest and respected reporter. As a Republican I’m embarrassed by the GOP chair.”Former Colorado Republican party chair Kristi Burton Brown also condemned the decision, calling it “dangerous”.The Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition posted in response the reporter’s removal: “Booting a credentialed journalist from a political party assembly, especially one who represents a statewide news organization like the @ColoradoSun undermines the vital role of the free press and directly impacts thousands of Coloradans who rely on The Sun for coverage.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWilliams, the Colorado Republican party chair, told the Pueblo-Chieftain that the reporter and the Colorado Sun are “nothing more than an extension of the Democratic party and we don’t need them coming to our convention”. No specific complaints or claims about the reporter or the newspaper’s reporting were cited or mentioned by Williams.Shad Murib, chair of the Colorado Democratic party, poked fun at Williams by openly inviting all press to the Colorado Democratic party assembly on 13 April.“Unlike the CO GOP, we’re not embarrassed by ourselves or afraid of the public,” he wrote. More